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This Tuesday, August 23, the entire northern part of the grain silos of the port of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, collapsed after other towers already fell on July 31 and August 4. The silos had been severely damaged since August 4, 2020, when almost 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate exploded in the port. This substance had been stored there without any protection measures. Two years after the tragedy, what happened remains a mystery.
In Beirut, this Tuesday, August 23, a deafening noise and a new cloud of smoke over the port revived painful memories.
Eight towers of the structure that houses the huge grain silos in the port of the Lebanese capital collapsed. These buildings had been heavily damaged since 2020, when they were hit by the blast of the double explosion that killed more than 215 people, injured thousands and devastated entire neighborhoods of the city.
On July 31 and August 4, other towers had already collapsed after a fire broke out in early July in the most damaged part of the silos, caused, according to the authorities and experts, by the fermentation of the stock. remaining grain, combined with high temperatures.
Since then, several towers remain on fire and the fire and collapse of the structures have rekindled the trauma of the relatives of the victims of the explosion on August 4, 2020.
The towers that collapsed on August 23 were the last in the northern block. For now, according to French civil engineer Emmanuel Durand, who installed sensors inside the silos, the southern block remains stable.
Some parts of the silos still contain tons of wheat and other grains that could not be removed due to the danger of collapsing, according to the authorities. In April, the same authorities had ordered the demolition of all the silos, but this decision was suspended due to the opposition of the relatives of the victims of the explosion of August 4, 2020, who want to turn them into a place of commemoration.
The relatives protested this Tuesday, August 23, demanding that the remaining block be preserved as a place of remembrance for their deceased relatives.
Lina Boubess, an activist present at the protest, told the AFP news agency that the relatives of the victims “just want to keep the memory” because, she added, “so far there has been no justice.” “No one has been charged.”
The Beirut port explosion: still a mystery
The explosion of August 4, 2020, was triggered in a warehouse that housed hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate stored since 2014 in a port ship.
But two years after the catastrophe, the investigation into the causes of the tragedy has been paralyzed for months due to political obstructions, which prevent clarifying how the fuel from the explosion caught fire.
Was it an accident due to welding work or an intentional act? The reasons why this time bomb was kept there and was never defused, despite repeated warnings, have also not been clarified. The day after the explosion, Charbel Wehbé, the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, declared that a commission of inquiry would identify those responsible for the tragedy in a few days.
But 24 months after the events, the mystery remains intact and the Lebanese questions remain unanswered. Subjected to attacks, slowed down by the maneuvers of the accused personalities, in particular by a request for recusal against him, the Lebanese judge in charge of the investigation, Tarek Bitar, had to suspend his work in December 2021.
Adding to the impediments to the investigation, the media and the public have shown a growing lack of interest. The families of the victims have seen the attention paid to their cause fade. Local and international media no longer cover their sit-ins on the 4th of each month, and only a handful of anonymous people join the rallies.
The drama of August 4, 2020: “an allegory of the stalemate in Lebanon”
And it is that little more than two years after that apocalyptic day, the living conditions of the Lebanese people continue to deteriorate. In an article published in the French daily ‘Le Monde’, Franco-Lebanese novelist Céline Bentz underlines that the drama of August 4, 2020 is an allegory of the “stagnation” of the country.
“Unprecedented economic crisis, power vacancy, endemic corruption, to which is added a resurgence of tensions with Israel linked to the discovery of important gas deposits in the high seas and the continuation of the war in Syria, which prevents the return of the million and a half Syrian refugees”, this is how the novelist describes the daily life of the Lebanese and the situation in the country.
The intellectual adds that this already long list continues to grow and asks: “How to deal with global warming when the country’s water resources are coveted by its neighbors and the Lebanese state is too fragile to administer them? How to guarantee food security when three quarters of the population live below the poverty line and dependence on Ukrainian grain is around 80%?
These are questions that, for the moment, remain unanswered in a country where most of those who lived through the civil war in the 1980s consider that the current situation is even more desperate than it was then.
While the anniversary of the double explosion has not been an occasion for popular mobilization and the judicial investigation is paralyzed, the human rights organization ‘Human Rights Watch’ advocates the creation of an international commission of inquiry under the auspices of the Council of Human Rights of the United Nations to clarify what happened that day.
But for this commission to be created, a member state of the Human Rights Council must request it. However, at the moment, no country seems to be rushing to do so.
With AFP and local and international media
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