Beirut blast: Lebanon after massive explosion

Images from Beirut show the extent of the devastation from blasts that shook the Lebanese capital Tuesday evening.

5 August 2020 : About 73 individuals were reported killed, while another 3,000 were injured in an explosive tragedy in Beirut, Lebanon yesterday, citing a BERNAMA TV report.

The blast is believed to have occurred near the city's port.

Meanwhile, according to an AFP report via The Guardian, the cause of the explosion is believed to be due to a fire that broke out in a warehouse that holds hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate.

The report added that the soldiers had surrounded the area which was now filled with glass and rubble.

What happened? - BBC

The explosion occurred just after 18:00 (15:00 GMT) on Tuesday. A BBC journalist at the scene reported dead bodies and severe damage, enough to put the port of Beirut out of action.

Local media showed people trapped beneath rubble. A witness described the explosion as deafening, and video footage showed wrecked cars and blast-damaged buildings.

The explosion blew out windows miles away

"All the buildings around here have collapsed. I'm walking through glass and debris everywhere, in the dark," one witness near the port told AFP news agency.

Hospitals were said to be overwhelmed and many buildings were destroyed.

The blast was also felt 240km (150 miles) away on the island of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean, with people there saying they thought it was an earthquake.

'Hard to imagine a worse time for this to happen'

By Rami Ruhayem, BBC News, Beirut

Their sirens wailing, ambulances inched their way through heavy traffic to get to the site of the blast. Shards of glass blanketed the highway leading into Beirut from the north, as a tractor cleared the rubble.

There's never a good time for such terror to strike a city, but for Beirut, it's hard to imagine a worse time than this.

With Covid-19 infections on the rise, hospitals were struggling to cope. Now, they're faced with thousands of injuries and expecting thousands more.

Hundreds are now displaced; their homes reduced, in a split second, to a twisted, uninhabitable mess of glass and debris.

Lebanon imports most of its food; its economy has been in freefall for almost a year, amid fears of widespread food insecurity to come.

Now all the grain that was stored in the port is gone. In fact, Beirut port itself "is no more", one official said.

Even after the shock fades away, the impact will be hard to fathom.

The injured, at least 3,000 were soon brought into local hospitals, carried by friends and family members or arriving on foot, with the streets made impassable to local ambulance services and cars overwhelmed. One of the city's biggest hospital, St. George Hospital in central Beirut was severely damaged that it had to be shut down and send patients elsewhere.

According to Dr. Peter Noun, the hospital's chief of pediatric hematology and oncology, "every floor of the hospital is damaged and I didn't see this even during the war, it's a catastrophe."

The government said "highly explosive materials" had been stored where the explosions occurred in Beirut's northern, industrial waterfront, with many mosques, universities, hospitals and churches nearby. It is remained unclear if the blasts were the result of an accident or an intentional attack as of Tuesday night.

Lebanon's government had already been facing large protests over mismanagement, corruption and an economic collapse. According to the Prima Minister Hassan Diab, "those responsible will pay a price for this catastrophe, this is a promise tot he martyrs and wounded people. This is a national commitment."

Whatever the cause, the explosions stirred memories of Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, and its aftermath, when bombings and other attacks were a regular occurrence. For all its economic and other woes, Beirut had been relatively peaceful in recent years before Tuesday's blast shattered much of the city.