"Martyrs of corruption ... A family mourns 3 missing firefighters in the Beirut explosion." With this headline, Bethan McKiernan, correspondent for Turkey and the Middle East at The Guardian newspaper, began her report, referring to what a family member says angrily, embodying Lebanon's grief, "not a single official was in contact with us to provide assistance."
The newspaper's correspondent tells that the family and colleagues agree that Charbel Karam - referred to in the picture with his relatives - was one of the bravest firefighters in the firefighting agency east of Beirut.
On Tuesday evening, the 32-year-old was on duty when a rather routine call came from Beirut port that a warehouse was set on fire, and by chance Karam was on shift with Naguib until his sister's husband (27 years) and Charbel until his wife's cousin (22 years old) .
At a time when the three were speeding down the coastal highway towards the port, Karam called on the video his wife Karlin and their two young daughters, saying to the two daughters, "Look, we are on our way to the rescue, your uncle is driving the fire truck very quickly!"
Less than half an hour after ending the call, the three of them, along with 7 fellow firefighters, were in the midst of one of the largest non-nuclear explosions ever recorded.
After 3 days, only one member of the 10-person team was confirmed dead, and the whereabouts of the rest of the team remains unknown.
The writer referred to what Mian Nassif (a relative of the three men) said, "The heart of our family is broken. We care a lot in this country for the martyrs who die fighting our enemy or protect our land, but they died for nothing; they are martyrs of the corruption of our government and its criminal behavior."
Paramedic Sahar Fares, 25, - the only death in 10 people - was buried in her hometown in al-Qaa on Thursday, but three days after the terrible explosion, the families of the nine other members of the team are still stuck in agonizing oblivion with their loved ones, who are still Missing.
The correspondent indicated that the firefighter misses the absence of her men, and one of the colleagues - who has been close to Karam since joining the station in 2008 - said, "We were like brothers, eating and working together, and we slept in the same room for 3 days at a time. I saw him more than my family, and he will be. It's hard to get used to his departure. "
"They lie to us for giving us false hope for as long as possible, because they do not want our grief to turn into anger," his colleague added.