Lebanon asked the army on Wednesday (05.08.2020) to put under house arrest an unspecified number of Beirut port officials responsible for storing the ammonium nitrate that this Tuesday caused the large explosion that has so far left more than 100 dead.
The Lebanese government also decreed a state of emergency for two weeks, and Information Minister Manal Abdel Samad announced at a press conference.
At least 135 people were killed in the devastating explosion and dozens are still missing, according to a new balance circulated on Wednesday by Health Minister Hamad Hassan.
Some 5,000 people were injured in Tuesday’s explosion. “There are certainly still (victims) under the rubble and we received dozens of calls for missing persons,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a government meeting.
Beirut’s governor Marwan Aboud said that up to 300,000 people were left homeless because of the enormous damage he said affected more than half of the capital of about 2 million people.
According to the authorities, some 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, stored “without security measures” in the port of Beirut are at the source of the explosions, the worst in the history of the Lebanese capital.
