Rescuers at work on what was the port of Beirut, August 7, 2020 in Lebanon.

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JOSEPH EID / AFP

Hope in Lebanon?

Rescuers are looking Thursday for a possible survivor under the rubble in a district of Beirut devastated by the explosion at the port last month, scanners having detected heartbeats, said the governor of the Lebanese capital.

A sniffer dog used by a team of Chilean rescuers dispatched to Beirut after the tragedy to find possible buried bodies made it possible to spot a collapsed building on the outskirts of Gemmayzé Street under which human bodies are believed to be found on Wednesday evening, he said. Governor of Beirut, Marwan Abboud, to reporters on the spot.

The scanners picked up "19 breaths per minute"

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

According to him, the devices used, at the cutting edge of technology, detected "heart beats".

"We hope that 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 using a thermal camera.

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

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.

Hope for the other missing

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

Authorities said the explosion was caused by huge amounts of ammonium nitrate stored without precaution for years at the port of Beirut.

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.

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