What We Know About the Explosions in Beirut, Lebanon

Dozens are dead and thousands hurt. The cause is unclear but the government said “highly explosive materials” had been stored at the blast scene in the Lebanese capital.

More than 70 are dead, the health ministry said.

Lebanon’s health ministry said that at least 78 people had died and 4,000 suffered injuries in the explosions and fire that shook Beirut on Tuesday.

The numbers climbed steadily through the day, and with the wounded still streaming into hospitals and the search for missing people underway, they were likely to go higher still.

The secretary-general of the Kataeb political party, Nizar Najarian, was killed in the blast, and among those injured was Kamal Hayek, the chairman of the state-owned electricity company, who was in critical condition, the news agency reported.

Mapping the Damage From the Beirut Explosions

Damage was seen at least two miles from the explosions, encompassing an area with more than 750,000 residents.

Videos of the aftermath posted online showed wounded people bleeding amid the dust and rubble, and damage where flying debris had punched holes in walls and furniture. On social media, people reported damage to homes and cars far from the port.

The Lebanese Red Cross said that every available ambulance from North Lebanon, Bekaa and South Lebanon was being dispatched to Beirut to help patients.

Hospitals were so overwhelmed that they were turning wounded people away, including the American University Hospital. Patients were transported to hospitals outside Beirut because those in the city were at capacity.

Public Health Minister Hamad Hassan announced that his ministry would cover the costs of treating the wounded at hospitals, the National News Agency reported. It said the decision covered both hospitals that have contracts with the ministry as well as those that don’t.

Prime Minister Hassan Diab announced that Wednesday would be a national day of mourning, the National News Agency reported. The Lebanese presidency said on Twitter that President Michel Aoun had instructed the military to aid in the response, and called an emergency meeting of the Supreme Defense Council, which declared Beirut a disaster area.

A huge cache of ammonium nitrate, an explosive compound, had been stored at the blast site.

A large cache of explosive material seized by the government years ago was stored where the explosions occurred, according to top Lebanese officials — specifically ammonium nitrate, commonly used in both fertilizer and bombs.

Accidental detonation of ammonium nitrate has caused a number of deadly industrial accidents, including the worst in United States history: In 1947, a ship carrying ammonium nitrate caught fire and exploded in the harbor of Texas City, Texas, starting a chain reaction of blasts and blazes that killed 581 people.

The chemical has also been the primary ingredient in bombs used in several terrorist attacks, including the destruction of the federal office building in Oklahoma City in 1995, which killed 168 people.

In a televised statement, an official of the Lebanese Higher Defense Council quoted Prime Minister Diab as saying: “I will not relax until we find the responsible party for what happened, hold it accountable and apply the most serious punishments against it because it isn’t acceptable that a shipment of ammonium nitrate — estimated to be 2,750 tons — was in a depot for the past six years without precautionary measures being taken.”

Hours earlier, Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, the head of Lebanon’s general security service, had said that “highly explosive materials” were stored at the site, which Mr. Aoun then confirmed. At first, neither of them said what those materials were, but General Ibrahim warned against getting “ahead of the investigation” and speculating about a terrorist act.

American military leaders “seem to think it was an attack,” President Trump told reporters at the White House, which was at odds with what Lebanese officials said. “It was a bomb of some kind.”

Mr. Diab, the prime minister, said in a televised statement, “Facts on this dangerous depot, which has existed since 2014 or the past six years, will be announced.”

“What happened today will not come to pass without accountability,” Mr. Diab said. “Those responsible will pay a price for this catastrophe.” he said. “This is a promise to the martyrs and wounded people. This is a national commitment.”

The explosions on Tuesday were preceded by a fire at a warehouse at Beirut’s port, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency.

There were local reports that the warehouse contained fireworks, and in several videos posted online, colored flashes could be seen in the dark smoke rising from the fire, just before the major explosion.

The governor of Beirut, Marwan Abboud, speaking on television, could not say what had caused the explosion. Breaking into tears, he called it a national catastrophe.

A smaller explosion was followed by a much larger one.

Two explosions shook Beirut — the second one much larger than the first, carrying enough force to overturn cars, damage and shake buildings across the city and strew, debris over a wide area.

The larger explosion, at 6:08 p.m., blew out the glass from balconies and windows of buildings several miles away from the port and at least one building collapsed from the force of the blast. One resident said the streets looked like they were “cobbled in glass.”

Videos posted online showed a shock wave erupting from the second explosion, knocking people down and enveloping much of the center city in a cloud of dust and smoke. Cars were overturned and streets were blocked by debris, forcing many injured people to walk to hospitals.

Flames continued to rise from the rubble well after the explosions, and a cloud of smoke, tinted pink in the sunset, rose thousands of feet into the sky.

The larger blast was heard and felt in Cyprus, more than 100 miles away, and registered on seismographs at magnitude 3.3.

I was bloodied and dazed. Beirut strangers treated me like a friend.

Vivian Yee, a correspondent for The New York Times, was at home in Beirut when two explosions convulsed the city. This is her first-person account of what happened.

I was just about to look at a video a friend had sent me on Tuesday afternoon — “the port seems to be burning,” she said — when my whole building shook. Uneasily, naïvely, I ran to the window, then back to my desk to check for news.

Then came a much bigger boom, and the sound itself seemed to splinter. There was shattered glass flying everywhere. Not thinking but moving, I ducked under my desk.

When the world stopped cracking open, I couldn’t see at first because of the blood running down my face. After blinking the blood from my eyes, I tried to take in the sight of my apartment turned into a demolition site. My yellow front door had been hurled on top of my dining table. I couldn’t find my passport, or sturdy shoes.

Later, someone would tell me that Beirut is of her generation, raised during Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, instinctively ran into their hallways as soon as they heard the first blast, to escape the glass they knew would break.

I was not so well-trained, but the Lebanese who would help me in the hours to come had the steadiness that comes from having lived through countless previous disasters. Nearly all were strangers, yet they treated me like a friend.

When I got downstairs, someone passing on a motorbike saw my bloody face and told me to hop on.

Everyone on the street seemed to be either bleeding from open gashes or swathed in makeshift bandages — all except one woman in a chic, backless top leading a small dog on a leash. Only an hour before, we had all been walking dogs or checking email or grocery shopping. Only an hour before, there had been no blood.

Read more of Ms. Yee’s account.

Health facilities were badly damaged at the moment they were most needed.

St. George Hospital in central Beirut, one of the city’s biggest, was so severely damaged that it had to shut down and send patients elsewhere. Dozens of patients and visitors were wounded by falling debris and flying glass.

“Every floor of the hospital is damaged,” said Dr. Peter Noun, the chief of pediatric hematology and oncology. “I didn’t see this even during the war. It’s a catastrophe.”

The 60-bed Bikhazi Medical Group hospital treated 500 patients in the hours after the blast, despite extensive damage, said Rima Azar, the hospital director and co-owner. One woman was already dead when she was brought in.

“The hospital has lots of cracked glass, the door to entrance of the hospital is completely shattered,” Ms. Azar said. “The full ceiling fell on some patients in some rooms. The pressure was horrific. We heard a boom, then everything was shaking.”

Health care workers worried about the fate of one of the country’s main vaccine and medication stockpiles, in the Karantina warehouse near the port. They said hundreds of thousands of doses, used to supply health centers across Lebanon, were stored on tall shelves in the warehouse, in an area where other buildings were badly damaged.

Inside St. George Hospital, about six-tenths of a mile from the explosion, “everything just fell down, the windows destroyed, the ceiling in pieces,” Dr. Noun said. Several of his patients — children with cancer — and their family members were among the injured.

Two parents of his patients were in critical condition, Dr. Noun said. Shards of glass from a shattered window ripped into the face and body of one of them, a father who was visiting his child. The man was intubated and in critical condition at another hospital, Dr. Noun said.

He said the parents of four children being treated for cancer were so panicked they grabbed their children, pulled out their intravenous needles and bundled them into their cars, headed to other hospitals or even went home.

A voice recording from Dr. Joseph Haddad of St. George Hospital was shared with other doctors across Lebanon, who forwarded it to The New York Times. In a follow-up phone call Dr. Haddad, director of intensive care at the hospital, confirmed the recording’s authenticity.

“My friends, my friends. This is Joseph Haddad calling you from St. George Hospital. There is no St. George Hospital anymore. It’s fallen, it’s on the floor,” Dr. Haddad says, as broken glass is heard crackling underfoot. “It’s all destroyed. All of it. Pray to God, pray to God.”

The explosion hit the waterfront, near several important buildings.

The explosions hit Beirut’s northern, industrial waterfront, little more than a mile away from the Grand Serail palace, where Lebanon’s prime minister is based. Many landmarks, including hospitals, mosques, churches and universities are nearby.

They erupted next to a tall building called Beirut Port Silos, at or near a structure identified on maps as a warehouse. Videos showed only twisted metal and chunks of concrete where that warehouse had been, some of it identifiable as the remains of trucks and shipping containers.

The blast stirred memories of war in a city that had been relatively calm in recent years.

The severity of the explosions recalled the days when bombings and mayhem were a regular fact of life in Beirut, both during its 1975-1990 civil war and its aftermath, including sporadic conflicts between Israel and Hezbollah.

Among the worst were in 1983, when a suicide attack on the United States Embassy killed 63 people in April, and bombing in October on the headquarters of international peacekeepers killed 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French troops. The attack on the Marines, the worst loss for them since the invasion of Iwo Jima in World War II, was blamed by American officials on Hezbollah, which the United States, Israel and a number of other countries consider a terrorist organization.

Another bombing in Lebanon upended Middle East politics in February of 2005, when Rafik Hariri, a former prime minister, was killed along with 21 others by a car bombing of his motorcade.

The attack was blamed by many on Hezbollah, a Shiite militia and political party, and its ally, Syria, which had deployed troops in Lebanon for nearly three decades. Under enormous pressure, the Syrians withdrew from Lebanon two months later, though they retained close ties to Hezbollah.

A United Nations-backed tribunal at The Hague has been trying four operatives of Hezbollah, which is now part of Lebanon’s government, in absentia for the Hariri assassination and is due to render a verdict this Friday.

In the summer of 2006, Israel and Hezbollah engaged in a 34-day war that, according to a tally by Human Rights Watch, left more than 1,100 Lebanese and at least 55 Israelis dead, most of them civilians.

But if the explosions on Tuesday were intentional, they would shatter a prolonged stretch of relative calm in the Lebanese capital. An Israeli intelligence official denied any Israeli involvement in the incident.

Less than a week ago, Israel said it had thwarted a raid by a “terrorist squad” from Hezbollah, the Shiite group that is part of Lebanon’s government, in a disputed border area. Israeli military officials said there was an exchange of gunfire, which Hezbollah denied. Israeli military officials say Hezbollah has planted many rockets in southern Lebanon that could threaten northern Israel.

But in recent years, the longtime enemies have sought to avoid another war. Hezbollah has refrained from killing Israelis while Israel has largely avoided killing Hezbollah fighters in Syria, where they are fighting on the Syrian government’s side.

Assessing the toll, a political party waits to learn whether it was malice or neglect.

When the explosion struck, meetings were in full swing less than a mile away, at the hillside headquarters of the Kataeb Party, a Christian political group that was once one of Lebanon’s most powerful.

The blast shook the building so badly that party members thought a bomb had gone off inside. As they collected their nerves and their belongings, they saw that the party’s general secretary, Nazar Najarian, had been wounded by falling debris. Mr. Najarian, known by the nickname Nazo, died of his injuries.

“He had been through explosions, assassination attempts, wars with the Palestinians and Syrians, Nazo saw it all,” said Elias Hankach, a Kataeb parliamentarian. “Our headquarters looks like a bomb went off inside. The inside is a mess, it’s madness.”

He said the party was waiting for clarity on whether the blast was an attack, the kind of crude tool used for decades to shape Lebanon’s political landscape, or just an accident resulting from mismanagement. If it turned out to be accidental, he said, then the disaster is not particularly surprising, the product of “cumulative nonchalance at all levels.”

“Whether you talk about the economy, safety standards, the port, the corruption — none of the country’s issues have had a serious attempt at resolution,” Mr. Hankach said. “We are living in this doomed management of the country.”

Ben Hubbard reported from Beirut, and Maria Abi-Habib from Los Angeles. Nada Rashwan contributed reporting from Cairo, Alan Yuhas from Philadelphia, Adam Rasgon and Ronen Bergman from Tel Aviv, Rick Gladstone from Eastham, Mass., and Richard Pérez-Peña from New York.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/world/middleeast/beirut-explosion-blast.html