Lebanon on Thursday marked two years since a massive explosion in the port of Beirut killed at least 220 people, injured thousands and devastated parts of the capital.
On the second anniversary of the disaster, several grain silos that were badly damaged by the blast collapsed, just hundreds of meters from where crowds had gathered for a protest on the edge of town.
The concrete silos cracked and collapsed, sending a cloud of smoke into the sky. The protesters covered their mouths in disbelief.
“The scene of the collapsing Beirut silos again reminds us of the explosion of August 4th, 2020. And today is August 4th – two years later, the investigation is still unresolved, the reconstruction is not over and fear is among everyone” , a Lebanese nurse, Hisham Al-Assad, told Reuters.
“Seeing the smoke coming out – especially since I was here during the explosion – triggers a really bad memory. It was the same smoke rising from the silos into the sky,” said Samer al-Khoury, a 31-year-old protester.
Thousands of protesters marched in tears in the Lebanese capital on Thursday, marking two years since a cataclysmic explosion in the port of Beirut, with chants denouncing the government’s failure to uncover the truth behind the blast.
Protesters, wearing T-shirts emblazoned with blood-red handprints, marched from Lebanon’s Ministry of Justice to the edge of the city and then to parliament in central Beirut.
The blast flattened parts of the city on August 4, 2020, killing at least 220 people. One of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, it was caused by huge stockpiles of ammonium nitrate held at the harbor site and neglected since 2013.
“It’s important for me to be here today because it’s very important for us to ask for justice and accountability for what happened,” said Stephanie Moukheiber, 27, a Lebanese woman living in Canada who decided to spend the summer in Lebanon.
“What happened was not a mistake, it was a massacre. It destroyed an entire city,” she said.
Several senior officials have been charged with responsibility, but so far, none have been held accountable — symptomatic, say critics of a ruling elite crippled by corruption and under whose watch Lebanon has plunged into political and economic crisis.
Lebanon’s current President Michel Aoun said days after the blast that he had been warned about chemical deposits at the port and urged security chiefs to do whatever was necessary.
The prime minister at the time also said he had been informed – but no one had warned the public about the dangers of the materials. The investigation into the explosion has been stalled for more than six months.
Source: CNN Brasil
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