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Beirut port blast crater 43 metres deep: security official
BEIRUT, Aug 9, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – The huge chemical explosion that hit
Beirut’s port, devastating large parts of the Lebanese capital and claiming
over 150 lives, left a 43-metre (141 foot) deep crater, a security official
said Sunday.
The blast Tuesday, which was felt across the county and as far as the
island of Cyprus, was recorded by the sensors of the American Institute of
Geophysics (USGS) as having the power of a magnitude 3.3 earthquake.
It was triggered by a fire in a port warehouse, where a huge shipment of
hazardous ammonium nitrate, a chemical that can be used as a fertiliser or as
an explosive, had languished for years, according to authorities.
The huge blast also wounded at least 6,000 people and displaced more than
300,000 from their destroyed or damaged homes.
The revelation that the chemicals had languished for years like a ticking
time-bomb in the heart of the capital has served as shocking proof to many
Lebanese of the rot at the core of the state apparatus.
Demonstrators on Sunday called for renewed anti-government rallies after a
night of angry protests saw them storm several ministries before they were
expelled by the army.
It was a new tactic for a protest movement that emerged last October to
demand the removal of a political class long accused of being inept and
corrupt.
“The explosion in the port left a crater 43 meters deep,” the Lebanese
security official told AFP, citing assessments by French experts working in
the disaster area.
The crater is much larger than the one left by the enormous blast in 2005
that killed former prime minister Rafic Hariri, which measured 10 metres
across and two metres deep, according to an international tribunal
investigating his murder.
French rescue and police teams are among a much larger group of
international emergency response specialists that has flooded into Lebanon to
ease pressure on local authorities unable to cope with the disaster relief on
their own.
Qatari, Russian and German rescuers are also working at the port blast
site.
BSS/AFP/ARS/1501 hrs