Sun 09 August 2020:
Maronite Patriarch calls for international investigation into Beirut port explosion
Lebanon’s Christian Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rai has called for an international investigation into Tuesday’s Beirut port explosion.
“It is a right for countries that provide Lebanon with generous assistance to know the mysterious causes, and the body that kept this big quantity of explosive material for six years at the most dangerous place in the capital [Beirut], and the reason for keeping them,” he said during a Sunday Mass.
He stressed that “what happened was a crime against humanity.”
The patriarch hailed Lebanese youth and charities who came to Beirut to assist the affected families, and help in removing the rubble from neighborhoods destroyed by the blast.
Information minister resigns in first gov’t resignation over blast
Lebanon information minister Manal Abdel Samad announced her resignation, saying Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s government failed to live up to the aspirations of the Lebanese people.
“I want to apologise to the lebanese people, whose aspirations we were unable to fulfil due to the difficulty of the challenges facing us,” she said in a short statement from the ministry.
Abdel Samad said she had tried in Diab’s government to address the demands of an unprecedented uprising that rocked the country last October, “but change remained far.”
Abdel Samad added the government did not live up to her aspirations and she was resigning out of respect for those killed, injured and missing after the massive Beirut explosion earlier this week, “and in response to the people’s demand for change.”
Abdel Samad is the second minister to resign from Diab’s government in one week, after Foreign Minister Nassif Hitti resigned on Monday.
At least 158 people were killed and thousands injured when a massive explosion rocked the Beirut port, causing a trail of destruction across the city.
Lebanese officials said the blast was caused by the detonation of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate that had been stored unsafely at the port for the last six years.
Several Lebanese politicians and parties have called for an international investigation into the blast.
The government has formed a committee to probe the incident, which happened as Lebanon was reeling under its worst economic crisis, as well as dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.
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