Beirut, Lebanon
Reuters
Thousands of mourners and protesters marched in the Lebanese capital on Friday to remember those killed in a huge port blast three years ago, as religious leaders and rights groups decried the lack of accountability amid a stalled investigation.
The explosion killed at least 220 people and wounded thousands when hundreds of tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse detonated just after 6pm on 4th August, 2020, sending a huge cloud over the city.
A boy rides his bicycle along a curb stained in red paint, mimicking blood, as Lebanon marks a national day of mourning for the third anniversary of the August 2020 Beirut port blast, in Beirut, Lebanon, on 4th August, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Mohamed Azakir
A view shows portraits of firefighters who were killed during August 2020 Beirut port blast, at the fire station in Beirut, Lebanon August 2, 2023. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
THREE YEARS SINCE PORT BLAST, LEBANON’S FIREFIGHTERS GRIND ON AS CHALLENGES PILE UP
For nearly three years now, 10 portraits on the outer wall of a Beirut fire station have honoured its firefighters killed in the explosion at the city’s port.
Their surviving colleagues, grinding on as Lebanon’s economic meltdown guts their salaries and budgets for repairs and equipment while a threat of wildfires looms large, say 4th August, 2020, remains burned in their memories.
“As a fire brigade, we extract corpses, we see ugly things other people can’t bear…but the port blast was something else,” brigade chief Captain Ali Najem told Reuters.
Ten members of the Beirut Fire Brigade, who arrived at the port that evening following a call about a fire, were eviscerated minutes later by one of the largest ever non-nuclear explosions.
More than 220 people were killed in the blast caused by hundreds of tonnes of ammonium nitrate unloaded at the port years earlier. Political pressure has derailed an investigation that sought to prosecute powerful people.
Najem recalls pulling up minutes after the blast to find the first team’s fire truck had been blown to smithereens, later scouring smouldering rubble with a flashlight, identifying one of his lifeless team members by her long hair.
It took weeks to find and bury all the rescuers. Since then, challenges have kept piling up, Najem says.
Four years of financial collapse left firefighters countrywide without enough spare parts for trucks, fireproof clothing and other equipment. Some ended up switching jobs as the value of their salaries collapsed with the local currency.
At the same time, demands kept rising. Najem’s firefighters deployed to Turkey and Syria to help respond to the Feb. 6 earthquake and have jumped into action across Lebanon to help fight wildfires.
STILL STUCK
Ahead of the anniversary, Najem invited the relatives of the killed firefighters and local officials to a memorial ceremony.
With few members of the public in the audience, Najem said the financial crisis seemed to have eclipsed the spirit of remembrance.
“The Lebanese people tend to forget,” he said. The first year’s commemoration was packed, he recalled, last year’s quieter.
Now, Najem said, “people are busy, more concerned with whether they can secure food and water.”
A few streets away in the Mar Mkhayel district – one of those hit hardest by the blast – renovated restaurants and bars host an influx of foreign tourists and Lebanese expatriates.
“Restaurants are full, and the graveyards are full too,” Najem said.
But those at the memorial said they could not forget. One surviving rescuer said he had been awash with guilt for years, feeling he should have been responding to the emergency instead.
Rita Hitti, who attended the memorial to honour her son, 26-year-old Najib, her 34-year-old brother-in-law Charbel and her 21-year-old nephew, also Charbel, said that moving on was not an option.
“As parents, we’re still in August 4. It’s like no time has passed,” said Hitti, blinking away welling tears.
– MAYA GEBEILY and FABIO KASSAB, Beirut, Lebanon/Reuters
Despite the devastation, no senior figures have been held to account and an investigation has been obstructed by legal measures, prompting outrage in Lebanon and abroad.
On Friday, a few thousand protesters marched from the Beirut Fire Brigade – which lost 10 members in the blast – to the port.
They carried signs demanding justice and portraits of the victims – shots of laughing toddlers, passport photos of elderly women and selfies of young adults all killed in the disaster.
Edgard Sayyah, 58, walked alone holding a photograph of his aunt Therese as a young woman. Therese was 70 when the explosion ripped through her apartment in Beirut and killed her.
“It’s shameful,” Sayyah told Reuters, when asked about the lack of accountability and the relatively small numbers at the memorial compared to previous years.
“Two years from now, there won’t be any marches at all. We’ll just hold private services and suffer silently.”
The rally shut down the main highway separating the port from the Mar Mkhayel district, a bustling neighbourhood of restaurants and bars that was ripped apart by the explosion.
Many of the establishments have been painstakingly rebuilt, hosting an influx of tourists and Lebanese expatriates late into Thursday night. On Friday, the streets were empty and businesses shuttered to mark a national day of mourning.
Rights group Amnesty International said it was unacceptable that no-one has been held responsible for the tragedy.
“Instead, the authorities have used every tool at their disposal to shamelessly undermine and obstruct the domestic investigation to shield themselves from accountability – and perpetuate the culture of impunity in the country,” said Aya Majzoub, Amnesty’s deputy director for the region.
The explosion is thought to have been set off by a fire in a warehouse. The chemicals had been stored at the port since 2013 when they were unloaded during an unscheduled stop, but no one claimed the shipment and it remained there despite senior officials knowing of its presence.
The probe, led by Judge Tarek Bitar, has been stalled since late 2021 by a slew of legal complaints filed against him by some of the suspects, including current and former officials.
In a memorial church service on the eve of the blast anniversary, Lebanon’s top Christian cleric, Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rai, backed calls for an international fact-finding committee and called for a halt to meddling in the investigation.
“What hurts these families and hurts us the most is the indifference of state officials who are preoccupied with their interests and cheap calculations,” Rai said.
The blast hit as Lebanon was already struggling with a financial meltdown that began in 2019 and the COVID pandemic. The economy has sunk further since, with the local currency losing 98 per cent of its value and thousands of families living in poverty.
