Sifting Beirut's rubble for bodies: Over 100 people are killed and thousands hurt after 'welder' sparks warehouse fire that ignited 2,700 tons of highly explosive chemicals 'seized from a ship' causing 3 kiloton blast - a fifth the size of Hiroshima bomb
Daily Mail
August 5, 2020
Survivors of the blast which devastated the Lebanese capital of Beirut were sifting the ruins of their city for bodies today as the death toll topped 100 and was expected to keep rising.
Meanwhile hospitals were creaking under the strain of more than 4,000 wounded, as fires continued to burn in the ruins of the port which resembled a scrapyard.
Barely a building was left untouched by the explosion, caused by a fire which ignited 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse at the docks, which then exploded with three kilotons of force - roughly a fifth the size of the Little Boy bomb which levelled Hiroshima.
After a night of shock and awe, the full scale of the calamity now facing Lebanon - a country that was already in the midst of an economic crisis - was laid bare at dawn as world leaders rushed to offer aid.
President Donald Trump described a massive explosion in Beirut as a ‘terrible attack’ Tuesday, despite no evidence currently suggesting the blasts were intentional.
'The United States stands ready to assist Lebanon,’ Trump said of the devastating scenes during a White House briefing. ‘We will be there to help. It looks like a terrible attack.’
When
quizzed by a reporter if he was certain the explosion was in fact an
attack, Trump said he had 'met with some of our great generals and they
seem to feel that it was.
'This was not
some kind of a manufacturing explosion type of event. They would know
better than I would,' the president continued. 'They seem to think ...
it was a bomb of some kind, yes.'
3 comments:
I saw the video. There was at least one decent camera directed to the area after the first blast. The second, much bigger blast, was truly impressive. The footage shown on a lot of TV news of the Bridal Shoot was also a sight to behold. Some news reports said the blast was detectable in Cypress.
Also, Trump was a freaking idiot to shoot his mouth off before even the barest of facts was known. I grant you that any time something goes BANG in the middle east a deliberate attack is a fair assumption, but it is not always correct (obviously).
Ammonia Nitrate is nasty stuff. Just ask the any living survivors of the 1947 Texas City explosion or the Oklahoma City Federal Courthouse bombing.
Some years back the government in the U K demanded that fertilizer manufacturers alter their product to make it much harder to make fertilizer bombs. Even without the typical modifier (#2 Diesel is often used) it is potentially very nasty stuff. They are now talking 300,000 homeless in Beirut. The blast rolled several ships in the harbor.
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