BEIRUT BLAST: “EXTERNAL INTERFERENCE” OR “EXPLOSION OF AN ARMAMENT WAREHOUSE”

Middle East World

Sat 08 August 2020:

“There are two possibilities for what happened. Either it was a result of negligence, or external interference by a missile or a bomb,” said Aoun in a statement posted to Twitter.

It was the first acknowledgement of the possibility of an attack by Lebanese President.

The Christian Lebanese leader, who has maintained a pact with Hezbollah since 2006, rejected calls for an international probe into the incident. “If we cannot rule ourselves, then no one can rule us,” he said.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a speech on Friday said only an investigation would reveal the cause of the catastrophe and insisted his group had no military presence in the port.

Israel days earlier moved to deny any involvement in the human catastrophe, with Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi telling Israeli N12 television the explosion was most likely an accident.

Lebanon’s top security officials have told the public a 2,750-tonne store of ammonium nitrate, confiscated and held under murky circumstances by Port of Beirut Customs in 2013, was the source of the final, apocalyptic blast.

Lebanon’s Customs chief Badri Daher, a notorious figure long dogged by accusations of corruption, has said a depot of fireworks was being stored near the deadly stockpile, and may have caused the initial explosion.

Yet the fireworks scenario is being met with intense skepticism, given the obvious dangers such a close storage arrangement would present.

Dozens of fireworks were stored in port hangar, former port worker says

A former port worker told the Guardian that dozens of bags of fireworks were stored in the same hangar as the “thousands of tonnes of ammonium nitrate” at Beirut’s port and may have been a decisive factor in igniting the chemical which fuelled the explosion.

“There were 30 to 40 nylon bags of fireworks inside warehouse 12,” Yusuf Shehadi said, adding that he personally saw the delivery of the fireworks which had been confiscated by customs about a decade ago.

“They were on the left-hand side when you entered the door. I used to complain about this. It wasn’t safe. There was also humidity there. This was a disaster waiting to happen,” Shehadi was quoted as saying.

He also said that had been instructed by the Lebanese army to house the ammonium nitrate chemical in warehouse 12 at the port, the Guardian reported, despite calls by state security officials and customs personnel urging the removal of the substance.   

Hezbollah leader denies claims that warehouse had group’s weapons 

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah strongly denied claims that the armed group had any weapons stored at the warehouse prior to the explosion, adding that that the investigation will soon “reveal the truth” behind the deadly blast.  

“We have nothing in the port: not an arms depot, nor a missile depot nor missiles nor rifles nor bombs nor bullets nor ammonium nitrate,” Nasrallah said in televised speech. “Our people are among those injured and killed in the blast.”

Nasrallah called for accountability and noted that there is a “consensus” for a just and transparent investigation.

“Anyone responsible should be held to account … Nobody should be protected,” he said.

The armed group’s secretary-general said that the Beirut blast was an exceptional event in Lebanon’s modern history and that should be dealt with as such. 

“All of Hezbollah’s personnel and institutions … are under the state and the municipality’s disposal,” Nasrallah said.

Italian Expert

“I do not believe there was that amount of ammonium nitrate at the port of Beirut, nor that there was a fireworks depot,” explosives expert Danilo Coppe told Italian daily Corriere.

“When ammonium nitrate detonates, it generates an unmistakable yellow cloud. Instead, from the videos of the explosion, in addition to the white sphere that can be seen expanding – which is condensation of the sea air – you can clearly see a brick orange column tending to bright red, typical of lithium participation. Lithium-metal is a propellant for military missiles, so I think there were armaments there.”

“It seems like an explosion of an armament warehouse,” said Coppe.

The official explanation is that the now infamous Hangar No. 12 was used as a catch-all for dangerous and illicit items confiscated by Customs authorities. But the public has not yet been given a credible explanation for why ammonium nitrate would have been placed next to other hazardous items.

The bizarre arrangement has raised suspicions the ammonium nitrate may have even served as a shield for arms underneath.

Military Expert

“I’ve spoken to several [Lebanese former and current] military people that all agreed this was an arms depot exploding after the first strike, and that the ammonium nitrate would not ignite without a fuse, in this case an explosion,” said Riad Kahwaji, head of the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis.

The Lebanese army does not store arms or ammunition in the port.

“It all moves immediately to the barracks. No explosive material permitted to stay at the ports,” said Kahwaji. “If it was not the army, who else has arms depots?”

Nasrallah, Haifa to Beirut

Hezbollah leader Nasrallah, in a televised address on Friday, said his party had no arms stores in the port and nothing to do with the contents of Hangar 12.

“Hezbollah maybe knows Haifa port better than Beirut port,” he said.

 

Nasrallah in 2016 said his Shiite group’s missiles were capable of hitting a secret ammonia store at the northern Israeli port and creating the equivalent of a nuclear weapon, something he said created a “balance of terror,” essentially mutually-assured destruction.

Instead, it would be Beirut Port’s own hidden stores that would maim its own people.

The near-total destruction of Beirut Port also comes one year after Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon accused Lebanese authorities of allowing the facility to become “Hezbollah’s port.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2018 accused Hezbollah of “using the innocent people of Beirut as human shields” in its choices of military sites. “Israel will not let you get away with it,” he said.

“The official word, is this was an accident,” said Kahwaji. “Everyone was surprised by the magnitude of the explosion, including the Israelis themselves, and hence they don’t want to take responsibility. Hezbollah won’t say because they don’t want to admit having weapons in the city.”

Such a finding would implicate every Lebanese government of the past six years, already under fierce scrutiny for clear neglect. And it would suggest that Hezbollah had put the constituents of their Christian allies in East Beirut in harm’s way.

Lebanese sectarian political factions now appear to be in damage control mode, deflecting responsibility for more than 150 dead, thousands wounded, and a quarter million made homeless.

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