• Beirut, explosions at the port: over 135 dead and 5 thousand injured. "Toxic air, leave the city"

Share

5 August 2020 The explosions that devastated Beirut yesterday, costing the lives of hundreds of people, could have been caused by an "external hand". So thinks the Lebanese writer Hafez Haidar, who among other things has translated and edited for Italy the works of the Lebanese poet, painter and aphorist naturalized American Khalil Gibran.
'' The accident cannot be ruled out - he explains to AdnKronos Haidar, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 and is president of several human rights committees - but neither can the intervention of an external hand who took advantage of this situation to increase Lebanon's tragedy. I think the hypothesis of an attack that may be on the agenda should not be excluded. In practice, for this slaughterhouse, everything is to be evaluated ''. Just as it is necessary to consider '' human error and that is the fact that the 'weapons' have been deposited in a strategic area, the heart of Beirut and therefore of Lebanon. But it could also have been someone who, knowing that place, took advantage of it and carried out an attack. Everything is possible''.
On the other hand, "Lebanon is targeted by many states", Haidar says, recalling that "Hezbollah has officially declared that it has nothing to do with this action. It is a political party, supported by Iran, but it cannot be excluded that it acted because it has many representatives in the government and many ministers. I do not defend their part, but on the basis of my personal reasoning, I believe that an external hand has intervened that wants to definitively ruin Lebanon ''. A country that, he says, '' needs help more than ever.
Some foreign states may have used some Lebanese 'tool'. We must evaluate, time is the best judge. ''

'' When these bombs exploded - says Haidar who edited, among the latest publications, 'Muhammad and the flowers of the Koran' (Diarkos) - all the windows of the houses broke and this is why the number of wounded has risen to the stars. They told me that the effect was that of an earthquake or, smaller, of the Hiroshima bomb. ''
'' With the Covid-19 emergency - Haidar highlights - Lebanon, beyond this tragedy, is going through a very difficult period. The number of patients is growing rapidly and hospitals are no longer supporting the influx of patients. '' These explosions have therefore "aggravated the health emergency, to which must be added the poverty that has been affecting the Lebanese population for some time".
In this regard, Haidar recalls that the value "of the Lebanese lira has fallen a lot compared to the dollar".
The explosions, Haidar argues finally, represent an unprecedented devastation that did not take at this tragic moment for Lebanon both from an economic point of view and from the point of view of the epidemic that has invaded the country. The devastation, however, occurred in a strategic place where wheat is also deposited. In the port of Beirut, where I did the military, everything that comes from abroad is kept. In addition to the victims and the devastation, we also register a shortage of food. '' What is certain is that, for the Lebanese writer and translator, what happened in the Land of the Cedars, can also be considered in a certain sense the fruit of neglect. '' In that warehouse - he maintains - those 'bombs' that should have been sorted immediately should not be left. Which was not done. ''