Middle East Desk
Report
BEIRUT: Lebanese rescue workers searched for survivors in the mangled wreckage of buldings and investigators blamed negligence for a massive warehouse explosion that sent a devastating blast wave across Beirut, killing at least 113 people.
More than 4,000 people were injured in Tuesday’s explosion at Beirut port and tens of thousands were left without homes fit to live in after shockwaves smashed building facades, sucked furniture out into streets and shattered glass miles inland.
The death toll was expected to rise from the blast that officials blamed on a huge stockpile of highly explosive material stored for years in unsafe conditions at the port. The explosion was the most powerful ever to rip through Beirut, a city still scarred by civil war that ended three decades ago and reeling from an economic meltdown and a surge in coronavirus infections. The blast rattled buildings on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, about 100 miles (160 km) away.
President Michel Aoun said 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, used in fertilisers and bombs, had been stored for six years at the port without safety measures, after it was seized.
He said in a national address the government was “determined to investigate and expose what happened as soon as possible, to hold the responsible and the negligent accountable.”
An official source familiar with preliminary investigations blamed the incident on “inaction and negligence”, saying “nothing was done” by committees and judges involved in the matter to order the removal of hazardous material. The cabinet ordered port officials involved in storing or guarding the material since 2014 to be put under house arrest, ministerial sources told Reuters. The cabinet also announced a two-week state of emergency in Beirut.
Ordinary Lebanese, who have lost jobs and watched savings evaporate in Lebanon’s financial crisis, blamed politicians who have overseen decades of state corruption and bad governance.
“This is a catastrophe for Beirut and Lebanon.” Beirut’s mayor, Jamal Itani, told Reuters while inspecting damage estimated ran into billions of dollars. The health minister said the death toll had climbed to 113, as the search for victims continued after shockwaves from the blast hurled some of the victims into the sea. Relatives gathered at the cordon to Beirut port seeking information on those still missing. Many of those killed were port and custom employees, people working in the area or those driving nearby during the Tuesday evening rush hour.
The Red Cross was coordinating with the Health Ministry to set up morgues as hospitals were overwhelmed. Beirut’s Clemenceau Medical Center was “like a slaughterhouse, blood covering the corridors and the lifts,” said Sara, one of its nurses. “This is the killer blow for Beirut, we are a disaster zone,” said Bilal, a man in his 60s, in the downtown area, who blamed the political elite, calling them “thieves and looters”.
