Rouba El Husseini -
A month after a deadly port explosion killed over 190 people and destroyed swathes of Lebanon’s capital, the government’s account of the blast remains pockmarked with questions.
An initial explosion shook Beirut’s port area at around 6:08 pm (1508 GMT) on August 4, resulting in a fire, several small blasts and then a colossal explosion that flattened the docks and surrounding buildings.
Seismologists measured the event, which blew out windows at the city’s international airport 9 km away, as the equivalent of a 3.3-magnitude earthquake. The blast, heard as far away as Cyprus, left a crater 43
metres deep.
Hassan Diab, who quit along with his government in the wake of the blast, said 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate had blown up. The fertiliser had been stored in a portside warehouse for seven years, without precautionary measures.
But experts believe that the quantity that ignited was substantially less than declared by authorities.
Even in relatively low quantities, ammonium nitrate creates a potent explosive when combined with fuel oils and has caused numerous industrial accidents around the world over the years.
Regulations in the United States were tightened significantly after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which used two tonnes of ammonium nitrate and killed 168 people. US facilities that store more than 0.9 metric
tonnes of ammonium nitrate are subject to inspections.
The ammonium nitrate is widely understood to have arrived in Beirut in 2013 on board the Rhosus, a Moldovan-flagged ship sailing from Georgia and bound for Mozambique.
According to Lebanese law firm Baroudi & Associates, which represents the crew, the vessel had faced “technical problems”.
Several security officials said that it was seized by authorities after a Lebanese company filed a lawsuit against its owner.
Port authorities unloaded the ammonium nitrate and stored it in a run down port warehouse with cracks in its walls, the officials said. The Rhosus sank in Beirut port several years after it was impounded.
An investigation by the Organised Crime And Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) found that the vessel’s owner was Charalambos Manoli, a Cypriot shipping magnate. Manoli denies the claim.
The report said a Mozambican factory — Fabrica de Explosivos de Mocambique — had ordered the ammonium nitrate, but did not attempt to retrieve it after the Rhosus was seized. — AFP
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