Massive explosion in Lebanon

[SGMCF328]

The explosion created a 124m-wide crater!!

So far >135 people killed, >5000 injured and several hundreds missing.

Edited August 6, 2020 by SGMCF328

[inlinesix]

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Beirut blast: Lebanon gives investigating committee four days to find culprits, says foreign minister

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/middle-east/lebanon-gives-investigating-committee-four-days-to-find-culprits-says-foreign

 

[Tireburner]

Lebanon is really pitiful and in such a story state with civil wars between the different factions from the 70s to 90s, Hezbollah war with Israel and now this. Whatever things they had rebuilt during these times didn’t last very long. 

[Didu]

11 hours ago, SGMCF328 said:

The explosion created a 124m-wide crater!!

So far >135 people killed, >5000 injured and several hundreds missing.

Before

 

[Yewheng]

https://m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/lebanese-bride-almost-hit-beirut-explosion-filming-wedding_uk_5f2bcacfc5b6b9cff7ed8251?ncid=fcbklnkukhpmg00000001

 

Wow look at that video.. Its so unreal.. This wedding couple was having photoshoot.. Out of sudden loud explosion and shockwave.. The whole scene is like how can this be real? 

[inlinesix]

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The ship carrying the ammonium nitrate that blew up in Beirut was abandoned in 2014 by a Russian businessman, who has said nothing since the explosion

https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-igor-grechushkin-abandoned-boat-with-explosive-cargo-in-beirut-2020-8

[SGMCF328]

What an irony: the ship and cargo was retained at the port for safety reasons, which trigger the disaster several years later!

Beirut's accidental cargo: How an unscheduled port visit led to disaster

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/beirut-explosions-how-unscheduled-port-visit-led-to-disaster-12997316

MOSCOW: The chemicals that went up in flames in Beirut's deadliest peace-time explosion arrived in the Lebanese capital seven years ago on a leaky Russian-leased cargo ship that, according to its captain, should never have stopped there.

"They were being greedy," said Boris Prokoshev, who was captain of the Rhosus in 2013 when he says the owner told him to make an unscheduled stop in Lebanon to pick up extra cargo.

Prokoshev said the ship was carrying 2,750 tonnes of a highly combustible chemical from Georgia to Mozambique when the order came to divert to Beirut on its way through the Mediterranean.

The crew were asked to load some heavy road equipment and take it to Jordan's Port of Aqaba before resuming their journey onto Africa, where the ammonium nitrate was to be delivered to an explosives manufacturer.

But the ship was never to leave Beirut, having tried and failed to safely load the additional cargo before becoming embroiled in a lengthy legal dispute over port fees.

"It was impossible," Prokoshev, 70, told Reuters of the operation to try and load the extra cargo. "It could have ruined the whole ship and I said no," he said by 'phone from his home in the Russian resort town of Sochi on the Black Sea coast.

The captain and lawyers acting for some creditors accused the ship's owner of abandoning the vessel and succeeded in having it arrested. Months later, for safety reasons, the ammonium nitrate was unloaded and put in a dock warehouse.

On Tuesday, that stockpile caught fire and exploded not far from a built-up residential area of the city. The huge blast killed 145 people, injured 5,000, flattened buildings and made more than a quarter of a million people homeless.

The ship might have succeeded in leaving Beirut, had it managed to load the additional cargo.

The crew had stacked the equipment, including excavators and road-rollers, on top of the doors to the cargo hold which held the ammonium nitrate below, according to the ship's Russian boatswain, Boris Musinchak. But the hold doors buckled.

"The ship was old and the cover of the hold bent," Musinchak said by 'phone. "We decided not to take risks."

The captain and three crew spent 11 months on the ship while the legal dispute dragged on, without wages and with only limited supplies of food. Once they left, the ammonium nitrate was unloaded.

"The cargo was highly explosive. That's why it was kept on board when we were there ... That ammonium nitrate had a very high concentration," Prokoshev said. 

[SGMCF328]

If actions have been taken earlier to remove the ammonium nitrate, the explosion and massive lost of lives could be avoided! Those Lebanese officials involved show be trialed in the court for murder.

Some officials saw risk of Beirut blast, failed to act: Human Rights Watch

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/human-rights-watch-officials-saw-risk-lebanon-beirut-blast-15370376

Drone view of "The Gesture", a 25m sculpture by Lebanese architect Nadim Karam to commemorate victims of last year's Beirut blast, at the capital's port in Lebanon on Aug 2, 2021. (Reuters/Imad Creidi)

BEIRUT: A report released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday (Aug 3) concluded there was strong evidence to suggest some Lebanese officials knew about and tacitly accepted the lethal risks posed by ammonium nitrate stored at Beirut port before the fatal blast there on Aug 4 last year.

The explosion, caused by the chemicals stored unsafely at the port for years, killed more than 200 people, injured thousands and destroyed swathes of Lebanon's capital.

The report by the international rights watchdog contained more than 700 pages of findings and documents. Its investigation also concluded there was evidence that multiple Lebanese authorities were criminally negligent under Lebanese law.

HRW based its report on official documents it reviewed and on multiple interviews with top officials including the president, the caretaker prime minister and the head of the country's state security.

The investigation trailed events from 2014 onwards after the shipment was brought to Beirut port and tracked repeated warnings of danger to various official bodies.

"Evidence strongly suggests that some government officials foresaw the death that the ammonium nitrate's presence in the port could result in and tacitly accepted the risk of the deaths occurring," the report said.

It called on the United Nations Human Rights Council to mandate an investigation into the blast and on foreign governments to impose human rights and corruption sanctions on officials.