Speculation has mounted around what caused a storehouse of ammonium nitrate to explode in Beirut’s port Tuesday, killing at least 100 people, injuring thousands and laying waste to much of the Lebanese capital, with a report indicating that officials had tried to warn authorities about the danger to no avail.
Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab said 2,750 tons of the agricultural fertilizer ammonium nitrate that had been stored for years in a portside warehouse had blown up, sparking “a disaster in every sense of the word.
“What happened today will not pass without accountability,” said Diab. “Those responsible for this catastrophe will pay the price.”
Ammonium nitrate is used in the manufacture of explosives and is also an ingredient in making fertilizer. It has been blamed for massive industrial accidents in the past, including a 1947 disaster in which a shipment of 2,300 tons of the compound exploded in Texas City, killing hundreds and setting off a 15-foot tidal wave.
It was also a main ingredient in a bomb that destroyed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Last year, reports in Israel claimed that the Mossad had tipped off European intelligence agencies about the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah storing caches of ammonium nitrate for use in bombs in London, Cyprus and elsewhere.
Lebanon’s Supreme Defense Council has ordered that authorities complete an initial probe into the cause of the blast within five days.
A soldier at the port, where relatives of the missing scrambled for news of their loved ones, told AFP: “It’s a catastrophe inside. There are corpses on the ground. Ambulances are still lifting the dead.”
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