The two enormous explosions rocked the Lebanese Capital – Beirut’s port on Tuesday leaving 73 people dead and injuring 2,750 others, shaking buildings, and leaving the city in fear and chaos.
The second blast sent a huge orange fireball into the sky, flattened the harbor side, and sent a tornado-like shockwave ripping through the city, destroying windows of building kilometers away.
Bloodied casualties stumbled among remains and burning buildings across the city as the country’s Health Minister reported an initially estimated toll of 27 people dead and 2500 injured.
A military officer at the port told AFP: “It is a catastrophe inside. There are corpses on the ground.”
Relatives of those who worked inside the blast zone gathered at a security cordon as they fought for news of their kins.
“Ambulances are still lifting the dead,” the soldier added.
Sources say the blasts were heard as far away as Nicosia on the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus, 240 kilometers away.
A witness who lived near the port said the incident was “like an atomic bomb”
“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. I’m walking through glass and debris everywhere, in the dark.”
The county’s Red Cross reported “hundreds of injured” individuals and urged the residents to turn out and help with the blood donations.
The cause of the deadly explosion was not immediately established but a top official, General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim, said confiscated explosive materials had been stored at the port.
“It appears that there is a warehouse containing material that was confiscated years ago, and it appears that it was highly explosive material,” he said.
An Israeli government who requested anonymity told AFP: “Israel had nothing to do with the incident.”
Benjamin Strick, who works with investigations website Bellingcat, said on Twitter that the explosions appeared to have been centered on a 130-meter (420 foot)-long grey warehouse alongside a dock inside the port zone.
Retired US nuclear scientist Cheryl Rofer wrote on Twitter that the “red cloud” of the massive blast was “very likely ammonium nitrate”, a common agricultural fertilizer that is a highly explosive compound.
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Lebanon’s Head of State Michel Aoun called for “urgent” defense council talks, while Prime Minister Hasan Diab declared Wednesday a day of mourning.
AFP video footage of the aftermath of the blasts showed areas of near-complete devastation, with cars flipped onto their roofs like children’s toys, and warehouses flattened.
The explosion comes at a time when the country is already reeling from its worst economic crisis in deceased which has left nearly half of its population in poverty, and the coronavirus pandemic.
The explosions also came just three days before a UN tribunal’s verdict on the murder of former Lebanese Premier Rafic Hariri who was killed in a 2005 truck bomb attack.
