Prime Minister Hassan Diab said,”It is unacceptable that a shipment of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate has been present for six years in a warehouse, without taking preventive measures,” he said at a defence council meeting, a spokesman told a press conference.
“It is unacceptable and we cannot remain silent on this issue.” He added.
On Tuesday a massive explosion rocked Beirut flattening much of the city’s port, damaging buildings across the capital and sending a giant mushroom cloud into the sky. More than 70 people were killed and 3,000 injured, with bodies buried in the rubble, officials said.
The blast struck with the force of a 3.5 magnitude earthquake, according to Germany’s geosciences center GFZ, and it was heard and felt as far away as Cyprus more than 200 kilometers (180 miles) across the Mediterranean.
“What we are witnessing is a huge catastrophe,” the head of Lebanon’s Red Cross, Georges Kettaneh, told a local broadcaster. “There are victims and casualties everywhere.”
Ambulances wailed throughout the night and mountains of glass were swept from shattered apartments on to the streets below. Exhausted emergency workers trudged through the pre-dawn gloom, some holding sledgehammers, others carrying water. A car park in the Gemmayze district near the port had been turned into a triage centre. Orange plastic stretchers, slick with blood, were lined up from one side to the other.
Soldiers at the site cleared rubble as helicopters passed over dropping water to extinguish the smouldering remains. Aerial images of the port showed a deep crater of blown-out land.
