The violent explosions in Lebanon that rocked the port of Beirut on Tuesday could be due to "explosive materials" confiscated and stored in a warehouse "for years," said a senior security official on Tuesday. "It seems that there is a warehouse containing materials confiscated for years, and it seems that they were very explosive materials," said the director general of the General Security Abbas Ibrahim, questioned by televisions in moving in the area. "The services concerned are carrying out the investigation, they will say what the nature of the incident is," he added.
Dead and wounded
Videos posted on social networks showed an initial explosion followed by another causing the gigantic cloud of smoke. The blasts rocked buildings and smashed windows for miles around. According to the national news agency ANI, there were "deaths and injuries". The president of the Lebanese Red Cross, Georges Kettaneh, referred to "hundreds of wounded" in an appeal to Lebanese television LBC. “We are overwhelmed with phone calls,” he said.
"It's a disaster inside (the port). There are corpses on the ground. Ambulances are taking the bodies away," a soldier near the port told AFP. Local media broadcast images of people trapped under rubble, some covered in blood.
The port sector has been cordoned off by the security forces, which only allow civil defense, ambulances with howling sirens and firefighters, according to AFP correspondents at the entrance to the port.