Beirut blasts kill more than 70 and injure thousands

BEIRUT

The blasts came within seconds of each other.

First, an explosion in

Beirut’s port, possibly from a fireworks warehouse, sent a plume of smoke billowing over the capital skyline early Tuesday evening.

Then a much larger explosion from a building nearby shot a chrysanthemum of orange and red smoke into the air followed by a massive shock wave of whitish dust and debris that rose hundreds of feet and spread out for blocks.

The seaside capital rocked like an earthquake. Cars tumbled upside down and bricks rained down from apartment buildings. Glass flew out of windows miles away and roofs collapsed.

The wounded stumbled through debris-choked streets to hospitals, only to be turned away in some cases because the hospitals, already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, were overwhelmed.

By late evening, the Health Ministry said, more than 70 people were dead and at least 3,000 wounded in the worst carnage to hit the city in more than a decade.

It was unclear exactly what caused the explosions, but Prime Minister Hassan Diab said an estimated

2,750 tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate had been stored in a depot at the port for six years.

The blasts were felt as far away as Cyprus, more than 180 miles to the west. They ravaged Beirut’s downtown business district, a nearby waterfront full of restaurants and nightclubs, and a number of crowded residential neighborhoods.

Families struggled to get wounded relatives out of their buildings so they could be piled into ambulances or onto the backs of motor scooters. The Lebanese Red Cross said that every available ambulance from North Lebanon, Bekaa and South Lebanon was dispatched to Beirut, but so many roads had been rendered impassible that many of the wounded had to walk to the hospital themselves.