Beirut: Many dead after huge explosion in Lebanese capital
At least 10 people have been killed in a huge explosion in the Lebanese capital Beirut, officials have said.
The country's health minister Hamad Hasan said there are a "high number of injuries", according to local news station LBC.
It reported the Hotel Dieu hospital is treating more than 500 people but cannot take any more and is appealing for blood.
https://news.sky.com/story/lebanon-l...eirut-12042456
Looking at the video looks like lots of gunfire...
https://www.facebook.com/501736069/p...8331654336070/
Viking
Re: Beirut: Many dead after huge explosion in Lebanese capital
I saw that too, just check this explosion. WOW! Just fireworks?
1 Attachment(s)
Re: Beirut: Many dead after huge explosion in Lebanese capital
The fireworks factory situated at the port in Beirut exploded, it has caused massive damage to buildings far and wide.
Attachment 43997
Re: Beirut: Many dead after huge explosion in Lebanese capital
There's a running updates page here at the London Guardian.
Early reports suggested it was a fireworks factory, but it's now starting to appear it may have been a huge amount of ammonium nitrate in storage at the port.
An analysis published an hour ago:
~~~Amid highly conflicting and vague initial explanations over the cause of the Beirut explosion, a few things stand out. Most of the video footage that has been posted on social media, appears to begin with the aftermath of the first of the two explosions.
A tall building is visible in the port area and next to it a fiercely burning fire is occasionally visible through the smoke. Also clear in many of the videos are a series of white flashes just below the main cloud of dark smoke.
One explanation that was quickly given was that these are detonating fireworks from a stored cache being set off by the fire.
Another potential explanation is that this could be ammunition that is being set off and is burning as you would expect to see when ammunition is hit or is being destroyed.
The secondary explosion is more puzzling still. An early explanation was that it involved warehoused nitrates exploding, or other stored “highly explosive material” as claimed by Lebanon’s internal security chief without being more explicit.
One of the most common nitrates in industrial use is ammonium nitrate, used in fertilisers. It is not ordinarily so explosive in its own right.
When it has been used in homemade explosives, by the IRA and Norwegian far right terrorist Anders Breivik among others, it has been mixed with other materials and is often detonated with a small amount of a more conventional explosive.
And slowed down frame by frame, the video on social media shows a second, highly symmetrical blast taking place at ground level all at once, throwing up a wall of dust and then a cloud into the air and tremendous speed. It suggests the release of a huge amount of energy which in turn creates a devastating pressure wave that carries debris over a least a kilometre.
None of which is to say that this is not a terrible accident involving a freak coincidence of circumstances. The 1947 Galveston fire in Texas involved a ship carrying nitrates and a fire that released other materials into a deadly explosive mix that killed over 500 people.
Re: Beirut: Many dead after huge explosion in Lebanese capital
In this tweeted video (and it's good it was tweeted, it means who took it survived!) you can see what does appear to be fireworks going off at the base of the smoke column. So that part of the story stands up. The explosion that follows it is truly shocking though.
