Four years ago, Helen Ata got a call from someone she didn’t know telling her that a massive explosion at the Beirut port had caused her building to collapse. Her brothers were trapped under the rubble.
One of them, Issam, survived, with a permanent disability in his right leg. Her twin brother Abdo, whom she calls her “other half,” died.
“We will never feel safe again,” she told The Associated Press, sitting next to a portrait of Abdo.
The port blast anniversary Sunday comes as the region braces for retaliation after an Israeli strike killed a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut and an explosion in Tehran, widely blamed on Israel, killed top Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. For many, the fears of a new escalation come as wounds of the port explosion four years ago remain raw.
On Aug. 4, 2020, hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate detonated in a Beirut Port warehouse. The gigantic blast tore through the Lebanese capital, killing at least 218 people, according to an AP count, wounded more than 6,000 others, and devastated large swaths of Beirut, causing billions of dollars in damages.
The blast stunned the nation and a probe by a maverick investigative judge into the explosion shook the country’s ruling elite, rife with corruption and mismanagement. However, years of obstructions by top officials to dodge accountability and stall the probe have hampered hopes for justice.
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News Voiced and Reported by: Soha.M
Sources: WSJ | BBC | Reuters | AP
Genre: Current Affairs | Geo-Politics | Beirut | Lebanon | Bomb Blast | Port
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