Beirut

source: Liberation

authors:  Hala Kodmani and Clotilde Bigot , in Beirut - 4 August 2020 

translation: GoogleTranslate/doxa-louise

Beirut blown away by two explosions

Tuesday in Beirut, after the blasts. Photo Hussein Malla. AP 

Powerful blasts rocked the Lebanese capital on Tuesday, wreaking havoc and killing at least hundreds of people. Their origin is currently unknown.

"Earthquake," "shock wave" of "worse than anything ever seen". People in Beirut lacked words to describe the explosions that occurred Tuesday at 6 p.m. local time in the port area. Even those who remember the massive attacks and colossal bombings that the Lebanese capital has experienced in recent decades have never seen or heard an explosion of such magnitude. On Tuesday evening, Lebanese President Michel Aoun called an "urgent meeting" of the Supreme Defense Council.

The governor of the city made reerences to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The images of the smoke mushroom caused by the blast are indeed reminiscent of an atomic bomb. The two successive powerful explosions shook the capital and caused devastating fires throughout the port area, and firefighters were still struggling Tuesday evening to extinguish them. Canadairs also participated in this war oo fire.

Overwhelmed hospitals

All of Beirut was completely blown away. The windows of buildings exploded for miles around, injuring residents in their apartments. The explosion was heard as far as the town of Saïda, about twenty kilometers south of Beirut. And according to witnesses, to the coastal town of Larnaca, Cyprus, a little over 200 kilometers from the Lebanese coast. Almost all the shop windows in the Hamra district (west) were shattered, as were the windows of the vehicles.

Cars with inflated airbags, some turned upside down like tin cans, but also buses abandoned in the middle of the roads and the motorway near the port ... The site where the explosions sounded was cordoned off an hour later by the Lebanese army and law enforcement, while ambulance and fire engine sirens drowned out the cries of distraught passers-by.

A house collapsed on its inhabitants, very young people and children remained trapped in the rubble. Closer to the site of the explosions, multi-storey buildings collapsed. The number of dead and injured was still unknown in the early evening. A first estimate of the Ministry of Health gave a death toll of 30, but this could reach hundreds given the power of the explosions.

The injured - at least 3,000, according to Lebanese authorities on Tuesday evening - rushed to hospitals, unable to cope with the influx. Already overwhelmed by Covid patients, they could only take care of the most serious cases, sending back those who only needed stitches. Most of them were hit by shards of glass, and the injured were asked to fend for themselves. At the Hôtel-Dieu in Beirut, the security chief said the emergency departments were overwhelmed, with wounded on the ground and outside the building.

Likely an accident

While the true cause of this giant explosion remained undetermined Tuesday at the end of the day, various speculations and leads were suggested by different sources. First, the Minister of Health, Hamad Hassan (close to Hezbollah), began by explaining that a ship carrying fireworks had exploded in the port. Then trucks that would have approached a military base were mentioned. The possibility of an Israeli attack was put forward for a while, according to reports from the Haaretz daily . This was  denied both by Lebanese sources and by the Israeli military.

An accident seemed most likely Tuesday night, according to General Abbas Ibrahim, director of General Security. He said the explosions would have occurred in a "depot of highly explosive materials in the port". The customs director, for his part, mentioned nitrates as the cause of the blasts.

This drama strikes Lebanon, which declared a day of national mourning on Wednesday, as it is going through the worst crisis in its history, at once financial, economic, social and health. It will now have to manage the consequences of this new disaster.