MONSTER BEIRUT BLASTS KILL 78
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — Two enormous explosions devastated Beirut’s port on Tuesday, 4 August, leaving at least 78 people dead and thousands injured, shaking distant buildings and spreading panic and chaos across the Lebanese capital.
The second blast sent an enormous orange fireball into the sky, immediately followed by a tornado-like shockwave that flattened the port and swept the city, shattering windows kilometers away. Prime Minister Hassan Diab said that 2,750 tons of the agricultural fertilizer ammonium nitrate that had been stored for years in a portside warehouse had blown up, sparking “a disaster in every sense of the word.” Bloodied and dazed wounded people stumbled among the debris, glass shards and burning buildings in central Beirut as the health ministry reported 78 dead and around 4,000 injured across wide parts of the country’s biggest city.
The Lebanese Red Cross said in a separate statement: “Until now over 4,000 people have been injured and over 100 have lost their lives. Our teams are still conducting search and rescue operations in the surrounding areas.”
“What happened today will not pass without accountability,” Diab said. “Those responsible for this catastrophe will pay the price.”
It was like an atomic bomb.
General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim earlier said the “highly explosive material” had been confiscated years earlier and stored in the warehouse, just minutes walk from Beirut’s shopping and nightlife districts.
The blasts were so massive they shook the entire city and could be heard throughout the small country, and as far away as Nicosia on the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus, 240 kilometers away.
A soldier at the port, where relatives of the missing scrambled for news of their loved ones, told AFP: “It’s a catastrophe inside. There are corpses on the ground. Ambulances are still lifting the dead.”
“It was like an atomic bomb,” said Makrouhie Yerganian, a retired schoolteacher in her mid-70s who has lived near the port for decades.
“I’ve experienced everything, but nothing like this before,” even during the country’s 1975-1990 civil war, she said.
“All the buildings around here have collapsed.”
Her 91-year-old uncle, who lived in the same building, was wounded in the blast and later died.
AFP correspondents across the city saw shop and apartment windows blown out and streets covered with broken glass.
Photos posted online even showed damage to the inside of Beirut airport’s terminal, some nine kilometers from the explosion.
Hospitals already struggling with the country’s coronavirus outbreak were overwhelmed by the influx of wounded people and the country’s Red Cross called for urgent blood donations.
As the national defense council declared Beirut a disaster zone, Diab appealed to Lebanon’s allies to “stand by” the country and “help us treat these deep wounds.”