A month later, a survivor could be discovered.

Rescuers were looking on Thursday (September 3) for a possible survivor under the rubble of the double explosion at the port of Beirut on August 4, after scanners detected heartbeats in a devastated neighborhood, announced the governor of the Lebanese capital.

The army, it would have found more than 4 tons of ammonium nitrate stored at the entrance of the port.

According to Reuters, citing the official Lebanese agency NNA, the Lebanese army found 4.35 tons of ammonium nitrate near the entrance to the port of Beirut, the substance behind the double explosion. August 4.

However, the latter would have been caused by 2,750 tonnes, a quantity 632 times greater, stored without precautions for years.

Under a collapsed building

In the meantime, a sniffer dog was able to spot a collapsed building on the outskirts of Gemmayze Street under which human bodies are believed to be on Wednesday evening, Beirut Governor Marwan Abboud told reporters on the spot.

The animal is used by a team of Chilean rescuers dispatched to Beirut after the tragedy to find possible buried bodies.

Thermal scanners have picked up signals from the site, revealing the existence of one or two bodies under the rubble, said Marwan Abboud.

According to the latter, the devices used, at the cutting edge of technology, detected "heartbeats".

"We hope someone will come out alive," continued the city governor. 

Michel al-Murr, of the Beirut fire brigade, also reported the detection of pulses of "a person" about two meters under the rubble thanks to a thermal camera. 

At the microphone of a local channel, a Lebanese rescuer added that the scanners had picked up "19 breaths per minute". 

Hope rekindled for other survivors

The building where the research is taking place had completely collapsed after the explosion of August 4 which destroyed entire areas of Beirut, killing 191 people and injuring more than 6,500 people, according to the latest official report released Thursday, September 3.

Chilean rescuers as well as Lebanese civil defense teams and firefighters have been trying painstakingly to clear the rubble since this afternoon, said Michel al-Murr.  

The announcement on Thursday of a possible survivor under the rubble has rekindled hopes of finding other survivors, although this remains unlikely four weeks after the tragedy.

Seven people are still missing, according to the Lebanese army.

With AFP & Reuters

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