Shock turns to anger over Beirut blast
Officials admit port explosion was foreseeable and missed warnings
BEIRUT: Anger and dismay has been building throughout the city as officials admitted that a massive port explosion that killed at least 135 people, injured thousands and left many more homeless was foreseeable and had been the subject of repeated warnings.
With Lebanon’s capital still smouldering and the search for survivors continue, an emerging paper trail linked the blast to a mammoth stash of ammonium nitrate that was once described as a “floating bomb” and housed at the port since 2014, The Guardian reported yesterday.
As recently as six months ago, officials inspecting the consignment warned that if it was not moved, it would “blow up all of Beirut”.
The revelation that government negligence may have played a role in the worst explosion in Beirut’s history fuelled new anger towards Lebanon’s political class among a population already seething at an ongoing financial crisis that has sunk half the country into poverty.
Demonstrators in downtown Beirut attacked the convoy of former Lebanon Prime Minister Saad Hariri and brawled with his bodyguards in the most overt display of wider anger that is building against Lebanese politicians in the wake of the disaster.
From one shattered balcony, a thin noose was hung along with a sign. “Whose heads will be hung?” it read. “Hang up the nooses” also trended across Lebanese social media in an indication of the fury that followed the initial shock and grief.
The government said yesterday evening, it was putting an unspecified number of Beirut port officials under house arrest pending an investigation into how the highly explosive materials came to be stored less than 100m from residential neighbourhoods. Lebanon has started three days of national mourning and the government has declared a two-week state of emergency. – Agencies