IRISH PAIR IN BEIRUT BLAST TERROR
City ‘in chaos’ says woman knocked unconscious by deadly explosion
TWO Irish people living in Beirut yesterday told of their terror at witnessing the huge explosion that killed at least 135 people and injured more than 5,000.
Cafe owner Niamh Flemingfarrell, from Co Laois, was knocked unconscious when caught in the blast on Tuesday.
IN SHOCK Irishman Colin Lee
Speaking yesterday, she said: “The whole place is in chaos. This time the damage is not local. It’s half the city.” Colin Lee, from Drogheda, said his house had been left in ruins.
The charity director added: “We’re a bit shocked as to the scale and the force of it. I’ve been around bomb explosions before but nothing like this.”
RESCUERS continued a desperate hunt for survivors in ruined Beirut yesterday as it emerged the Lebanese capital was hit by the equivalent of a nuclear blast.
A state of emergency was in place as the death toll from Tuesday’s explosion hit 135 with more than 5,000 injured and 300,000 homeless.
The blast had the force of a 3.5-magnitude earthquake, according to German geoscientists, and was heard and felt as far away as Cyprus.
Defence analyst Bruce Jones said: “This explosion was one of immense power that is comparable to a nuclear explosion.
“Not only was the blast the power of a one-kiloton nuclear explosion but you could measure the horror by comparing it to Hiroshima. Hiroshima was virtually levelled but it was only around 15 times the strength of what we saw in Beirut.” Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun said in an address to the nation: “No words can describe the horror that has hit Beirut, turning it into a disaster-stricken city.”
He said the government was “determined to investigate and expose what happened, to hold the responsible and the negligent accountable”.
The explosion in the port area was the most powerful ever seen in the city, which
Russian businessman Grechushkin has suffered a 1975-1990 civil war, Israeli bombing campaigns and terror atrocities. There was initial speculation that the blast was an attack.
But Interior Minister Mohammed Fahmi confirmed it was most likely caused after a fire ignited 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate fertiliser stored in a warehouse in the port area.
It was speculated workmen welding nearby sparked the disaster – and the probe will also look into Russian businessman Igor Grechushkin, whose ship transferred the hazardous load to Beirut in 2014. The army is
»»135 dead, 5,000 injured and 300,000 homeless in Beirut hell
I haven’t seen anything like that since the civil war
MARWAN RAMADAN ON SCALE OF THE BLAST »»Russian businessman could face quiz over fertiliser blamed for blast
now in control of the city, which suffered an estimated €4billion of damage.
The blast smashed buildings 10 miles away and threw cars through the air. Witnesses reported “mountains of glass” and hospitals are filled to breaking point.
Bilal, a man in his 60s, said: “This is the killer blow for Beirut, we are a disaster zone.”
And Marwan Ramadan added: “It was a horror show. I haven’t seen anything like that since the civil war.” Lebanon’s prime minister, Hassan Diab, appealed for help, saying: “We are witnessing a catastrophe.”
Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs yesterday confirmed it has been contacted on a number of occasions for advice but it has not received reports of any Irish citizens injured in the blast.
A spokesman told the Irish Mirror: “The Embassy of Ireland in Cairo has been monitoring the situation in Beirut since yesterday. We have received a number of calls with no reports of serious injuries to Irish citizens.”
The British Red Cross has launched an emergency appeal to support the relief effort. And the Queen sent a message to President Aoun to say she and the Duke of Edinburgh were “deeply saddened” by the disaster.
Meanwhile, Russian Igor Grechushkin, who lives in Cyprus, may face questions. His ship was abandoned after it was detained in Lebanon carrying the ammonium nitrate in 2013.
The cargo was later transferred to Beirut, where it had spent six years in the port.
In 2014, the ship’s captain, Boris Prokoshev, warned it was “a powder keg”.
And a Russian paper branded the vessel “a floating bomb”.
An arrest warrant was handed to Lebanese troops for anyone involved in controlling the storage of the ammonium nitrate in Beirut.
NICK HARDING
SEVENTY-FIVE years ago today, at 8.15am on August 6 1945, there was a flash above the Japanese city of Hiroshima so intense it blinded those who looked directly at it.
A white-hot blastwave pulsed across the city, obliterating any building within a five-mile radius. Some 80,000 died immediately and the mushroom cloud rained deadly radioactivity on those left.
Another 60,000 died of horrific injuries within days. The bomb was called Little Boy – the world’s first atomic weapon.
Three days later another atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki.
Setsuko Nakamura, 13, was arriving for her first day as a codebreaker with the army in Hiroshima on August 6th. Survivors of the world’s only atomic attacks are called “hibakushas” – “person affected by a bomb” – and there are just 50,000 left.
Setsuko, now 88 and living in Canada, joined The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize for the group in 2017.
Here, she recounts what happened the day the world changed for ever...
It was Monday morning. We were on the second floor of the wooden building. The major was giving us a pep talk. At that moment I saw the bluest white flash outside and all around the building.
“My body flew in the air. I was floating. I lost consciousness. I came to in total darkness. I couldn’t move. I was pinned under collapsed timbers and knew I was facing death. I was calm. I heard girls whispering. ‘Mother, help me, I am here’, ‘God help me’. Then a strong male voice told me, ‘Don’t give up. Keep moving, I am trying to free you, there is light ahead of you, crawl towards it.’
“I did and I escaped along with two other girls. I looked back and the building was on fire. About 30 girls with me in the room were burned alive. Outside, it was as dark as twilight.
“As my eyes adjusted, I saw a procession of human beings, they looked like ghosts. They were almost naked, their clothes in tatters, they were burned and blackened, swollen and bleeding, skin and flesh was coming off their bones. They were slowly shuffling from the centre of the city. Some people were carrying their eyeballs in the palms of their hands. Some fell and their stomachs burst open. Soldiers told us to join them and escape to a nearby hill. We walked over the bodies.
“At the foot of the hill was a training field. It was packed with dead and dying. No one was screaming or crying. Just moans and whispers. Tens of thousands were begging for water. There was not a single doctor or nurse. The people were left there.
“With the other two girls, I worked all day trying to help. When darkness fell, we climbed the hill and I watched all night as huge balls of fire incinerated my hometown. My mind was empty. I sat there without any emotion watching the horror. Some envied the dead. To live in the aftermath was as hard or harder than dying. We were starving. There was no medical attention. The government was in chaos.
“The next day people started to come from neighbouring cities, they tried to rescue survivors, started cremating the corpses. Those who came to assist started to get sick too. At that time, we had no idea what radiation wou rescuers became victims. I s my hair, there was internal b
“Before the bomb, about students from all the schools brought to the city to work.
“They died instantly, som There were 351 from m school there. All those peopl were wiped from the Earth.
“My own sister-in-law wa a teacher supervising thos students. We tried to find he body. We never did. Th temperature was 4000C People melted. I lost nine two uncles, two aunts, tw cousins, my sister-in-law, m sister and her four-year-old child. They survived the blas but were badly burned.
“My mother was rescu crushed building. My fathe town fishing. From the boa mushroom cloud. He got t house stood. It had been fl parents found me and we w after my sister and her chi