Beirut blast: ‘It was like the apocalypse’

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Emergency fire crews and shocked onlookers search for people trapped under rubble after two massive explosions rocked the Lebanese capital, sending plumes of smoke billowing into the air and damaging buildings miles away. (AFP)
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Updated 05 August 2020
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Beirut blast: ‘It was like the apocalypse’

  • Two huge explosions that left more than 70 people dead and thousands injured have added to Lebanon’s grief

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s prime minister made a desperate plea for international help after twin explosions devastated Beirut and plunged his country deeper into crisis. 

The two massive blasts killed at least 73 people, injured more than 3,700, and destroyed and damaged buildings across the capital.

While the cause of the blasts remains unclear, Lebanese leader Hassan Diab vowed that those responsible would be punished.

“What happened today will not pass without accountability,” he said in a televised address. “Those responsible for this catastrophe will pay the price.”

With the country already trapped in a crippling economic crisis and battling COVID-19, Diab appealed for international assistance.

“I am sending an urgent appeal to all countries that are friends and brothers and love Lebanon, to stand by its side and help us treat these deep wounds,” he said.

The explosions took place at a warehouse in the city’s port shortly after 6 p.m.

Lebanon’s internal security chief Abbas Ibrahim said the blasts occurred in a section of the port housing highly explosive materials that had been confiscated and stored there for years.

Diab said that the “dangerous warehouse” had been there since 2014.

Even in a city with a history of conflict, the scale of the explosions was unprecedented. The blasts were so strong the they were felt in Cyprus, 200 km away.

Videos showed an initial explosion and fire, followed by a massive blast and shockwave spreading through the city’s buildings. People could be heard screaming and running for cover in restaurants and from balconies. Many thought they had been hit by an earthquake.


INTERNATIONAL REACTIONS

  • "The Kingdom expresses its sincere condolences to the families of the victims and the injured." - Saudi Arabian Ministry of Foreign Affair
  • "We stand ready to assist the people of Lebanon as they recover from this horrible tragedy." - Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State
  • "I express my fraternal solidarity with the Lebanese. France stands with Lebanon. Always." - French President Emmanuel Macron (tweeted in Arabic).
  • "The United States stands ready to assist Lebanon. We will be there to help." - US President Donald Trump 
  • "Our prayers are with our Lebanese brothers and sisters." - Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince
  • "My sincere condolences and sympathies to our brothers in Lebanon." - Egypt President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi
  • "We share the pain of the Lebanese people and reach out to offer our aid." - Israeli President Reuven Rivlin

“It was like a nuclear explosion,” Walid Abdo, a 43-year-old school teacher in the neighborhood of Gemayzeh, told AP.

Bloodied residents poured into the city’s streets as emergency teams rushed to the scene. Ambulances from across the country headed to the capital to help treat the injured.

Buildings across the entire city were damaged, with windows blown out and ceilings collapsed.

By nightfall the injured were flooding the city’s hospitals, with many being seen by medics on the pavements outside.

Health Minister Hassan Hamad said the hospitals were barely coping, and offers of aid were pouring in from Arab states and friends of Lebanon. Lebanese Red Cross official Georges Kettaneh said the injured were being taken to hospitals outside the capital because facilities there were full.

As speculation mounted over what had caused the explosions, an Israeli official said his country, which has fought several wars with Lebanon, had nothing to do with the blasts.

The explosions took place just days before a UN tribunal was due to deliver verdicts against four men accused of killing the former prime minister Rafik Hariri and 21 others in a 2005 bombing that shook the region. The suspects are members of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group that has since increased its role in the country’s government as well as conflicts across the region.

Rafik’s son Saad, also a former prime minister, said the  explosions had left Beirut “crying.”

“Everyone is being called to rescue (the country) and (provide) solidarity with our people,” he said. “The magnitude of the losses is too great to be described”

Prime Minister Diab declared a day of mourning on Wednesday, while President Michel Aoun called for an emergency meeting of the Supreme Defence Council, which declared Beirut a disaster-stricken city.

Across Lebanon and among the country’s widespread diaspora, Lebanese were left in shock at the latest tragedy to befall their homeland. Many scrambled to contact relatives and friends.

Lebanese musician Jad Choueiri said the scenes near his home in the Achrafieh neighborhood “looked like the apocalypse.”

He posted an image of his apartment windows blasted across his living room. “I could have died,” he said. “Blood is everywhere on the streets.”

Lebanese journalist Rima Maktabi tearfully described the damage to her home. “My house is gone I think,” she told Al Arabiya, the channel where she works.

Raja Farah, a pastry chef, said he was just half a kilometer from the blasts.

“It is impossible to explain the magnitude of this explosion. I was about as far from the Hariri blast a few years ago, and this was 100 times more powerful,” he said.

Across the city shocked workers and businesses owners poured into the streets.

A video from inside the offices of the Daily Star newspaper showed scenes of devastation, with computers strewn across the floor and ceilings collapsed.

The foyers of the city’s most famous hotels — the Four Seasons and the InterContinental Phoenicia Beirut — were strewn with broken glass.

At the scene of the blast, fire crews battled the blaze into the evening. Helicopters dumped water on flattened buildings as a ship in the port remained on fire.

Beirut’s tearful governor Marwan Abboud toured the site, saying: “Beirut is a devastated city.”

As the scale of the tragedy unfolded, foreign governments, both in the Arab world and beyond, offered their support.

Saudi Arabia said it was following the tragedy with great concern and affirmed the Kingdom’s support and solidarity with the Lebanese people. The UAE’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed said: “We pray that God grants you patience and solace. God bless Lebanon and the Lebanese people.”

Similar offers of support were sent from Bahrain, Kuwait, Egypt and Jordan. Israel, which is technically still at war with Lebanon, offered medical and humanitarian aid.

The US State Department said it stands ready to offer all possible assistance,” while France’s President Emmanuel Macron called Aoun to tell him French aid had been sent to Lebanon.


Tunisia says 612 migrants rescued, 18 bodies recovered at sea

Updated 18 March 2025
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Tunisia says 612 migrants rescued, 18 bodies recovered at sea

  • Tunisia has in recent years become a key departure point in north Africa for migrants making the perilous Mediterranean Sea crossing in hopes of reaching a better life in Europe

TUNIS: Tunisia’s national guard said on Monday its forces had rescued 612 migrants and recovered the bodies of 18 others in several operations overnight off the country’s Mediterranean coast.
Sharing images of some of those rescued, including women and children, after their boats capsized, the force said they were all migrants from sub-Saharan African countries attempting to cross the sea to Europe.
The survivors were rescued in several operations in the Sfax region to the east of the center of the country after their boats capsized or broke down, according to the national guard.
Exhausted people including women and children, some of whom appear to be dead, can be seen in the images. Some are pictured clinging on to large buoys.
In another image, a woman struggles to hoist a child, his body rigid and apparently lifeless, aboard the rescue boat.
Maritime guard members “succeeded in thwarting several separate attempts to reach Europe clandestinely,” the national guard said in a press release.
Along with Libya, Tunisia has in recent years become a key departure point in north Africa for migrants making the perilous Mediterranean Sea crossing in hopes of reaching a better life in Europe.
Its coastline in some places lies fewer than 150 kilometers (90 miles) from the Italian island of Lampedusa, often their first port of call.
Each year, tens of thousands of people attempt to make the crossing.


Rights advocates urge Morocco to annul activist’s prison term

Fouad Abdelmoumni. (AFP file photo)
Updated 18 March 2025
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Rights advocates urge Morocco to annul activist’s prison term

  • The signatories said the sentence was part of a “repressive policy” by governments across the region, “aimed at silencing any voices advocating for freedom of expression, respect for human rights and democracy”
  • Prosecutors argued that his statements constituted “allegations harmful to the kingdom’s interests” and went “beyond the limits of freedom of expression, amounting to criminal offenses punishable by law”

TUNIS: Nearly 300 rights advocates and experts from countries in North Africa and France have signed a petition calling on Morocco to free activist Fouad Abdelmoumni, sentenced to jail for “spreading false allegations” online.
Abdelmoumni, a human rights advocate, was sentenced in early March to six months in prison for charges related to a post he had shared on Facebook, alleging that Morocco had spied against France.
A petition, which by Monday has gathered 295 signatures, said that “Abdelmoumni should have been prosecuted under the press code, which does not provide for prison sentences. But he was charged under the penal code.”
He would be taken into custody “if the verdict is upheld” by an appeals court, said the petition shared on Abdelmoumni’s Facebook page.
The signatories said the sentence was part of a “repressive policy” by governments across the region, “aimed at silencing any voices advocating for freedom of expression, respect for human rights and democracy.”
They called for “the annulment of his sentence and the release of all political prisoners held in Morocco and other Maghreb countries.”
The signatories include former Doctors Without Borders president Rony Brauman, French-Tunisian historian Sophie Bessis, and Tunisian activists Mokhat Trifi and Sana Ben Achour.
In his Facebook post last year, Abdelmoumni echoed accusations of Moroccan espionage against France.
Prosecutors argued that his statements constituted “allegations harmful to the kingdom’s interests” and went “beyond the limits of freedom of expression, amounting to criminal offenses punishable by law.”
Abdelmoumni shared the post during a visit by French President Emmanuel Macron, which had marked a thawing of diplomatic ties between Rabat and Paris after three years of strained relations, partially over the espionage allegations.
In 2021, Morocco was accused of deploying Israeli-made Pegasus spyware to monitor prominent figures including Macron.
The allegations were based on a report by investigative outlet Forbidden Stories and rights group Amnesty International, which Morocco called “baseless and false.”
The spyware, developed by Israeli firm NSO Group, can infiltrate mobile phones, extracting data and activating cameras.
 

 


Lebanon and Syria agree to ceasefire after 2 days of border clashes, defense ministry says

Updated 18 March 2025
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Lebanon and Syria agree to ceasefire after 2 days of border clashes, defense ministry says

  • Lebanon’s president earlier Monday ordered troops to retaliate against source of gunfire from Syrian side
  • Fighting happened after Syrian government accused Hezbollah militants of crossing border

BEIRUT: Lebanese and Syrian defense officials reached an agreement late Monday for a ceasefire to halt two days of clashes along the border, Syria’s state-run SANA news agency reported.
The agreement also stipulates “enhanced coordination and cooperation between the two sides,” the statement from the Syrian Ministry of Defense said.
Lebanon’s president earlier Monday ordered troops to retaliate against the source of gunfire from the Syrian side of the border after more deadly fighting erupted overnight along the frontier. Lebanon’s Health Ministry reported that seven Lebanese citizens were killed and another 52 injured in the clashes, including a 4-year-old girl.
The fighting happened after Syria’s interim government accused militants from Lebanon’s Hezbollah group of crossing into Syria on Saturday, abducting three soldiers and killing them on Lebanese soil. Hezbollah denied involvement and some other reports pointed to local clans in the border region that are not directly affiliated with Hezbollah but have been involved in cross-border smuggling.
It was the most serious cross-border fighting since the ouster of former Syrian President Bashar Assad in December.
Syrian News Channel, citing an unnamed Defense Ministry official, said the Syrian army shelled “Hezbollah gatherings that killed Syrian soldiers” along the border. Hezbollah denied involvement in a statement on Sunday.
Information Minister Paul Morkos said Lebanon’s defense minister told a Cabinet meeting that the three killed were smugglers.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said five Syrian soldiers were killed during Monday’s clashes. Footage circulated online and in local media showed families fleeing toward the Lebanese town of Hermel.
Lebanon’s state news agency reported that fighting intensified Monday evening near Hermel.
“What is happening along the eastern and northeastern border cannot continue and we will not accept that it continues,” Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun said on X. “I have given my orders to the Lebanese army to retaliate against the source of fire.”
Aoun added that he asked Lebanon’s foreign minister, who was in Brussels for a donors conference on Syria, to contact Syrian officials to resolve the problem “and prevent further escalation.”
Violence recently spiked in the area between the Syrian military and armed Lebanese Shiite clans closely allied with the former government of Assad, based in Lebanon’s Al-Qasr border village.
Lebanese media and the observatory say clans were involved in the abductions that sparked the latest clashes.
The Lebanese and Syrian armies said they have opened channels of communication to ease tensions. Lebanon’s military also said it returned the bodies of the three killed Syrians. Large numbers of Lebanese troops have been deployed in the area.
Lebanese media reported low-level fighting at dawn after an attack on a Syrian military vehicle. The number of casualties was unclear.
Early on Monday, four Syrian journalists embedded with the Syrian army were lightly wounded after an artillery shell fired from the Lebanese side of the border hit their position. They accused Hezbollah of the attack.
Meanwhile, senior Hezbollah legislator Hussein Hajj Hassan in an interview with Lebanon’s Al Jadeed television accused fighters from the Syrian side of crossing into Lebanese territory and attacking border villages. His constituency is the northeastern Baalbek-Hermel province, which has borne the brunt of the clashes.
Lebanon has been seeking international support to boost funding for its military as it gradually deploys troops along its porous northern and eastern borders with Syria as well as its southern border with Israel.
Speaking from the southern border on Monday, UN envoy Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert also warned the Security Council that the sustained presence of Israeli forces on Lebanese territory, alongside ongoing Israeli strikes, could easily lead to “serious ripple effects.”
On Monday, Israeli strikes hit several sites in southern Syria, including in the city of Daraa. The Israeli military said it was hitting “command centers and military sites containing weapons and military vehicles belonging to the old Syrian regime, which (the new army) are trying to make reusable.” Since the fall of Assad, Israeli forces have seized territory in southern Syria, which Israel said is a move to protect its border.
Syria’s Civil Defense said that three people were killed and 14 injured in the strikes, including four children, a woman and three civil defense volunteers.


Sudan army inches closer to retaking Khartoum

Updated 18 March 2025
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Sudan army inches closer to retaking Khartoum

  • Shelling by Rapid Support Forces kills six civilians, including two children

OMDURMAN: Shelling by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces killed six civilians, including two children, in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman, a doctor said Monday, as the army inched closer to the capital’s presidential palace.

Sunday’s attack also wounded 36 civilians, half of them children, the doctor at Al-Nao Hospital said.

The bombardment struck residential areas in northern Omdurman, hitting civilians inside their homes and children playing on a football field, the Khartoum regional government’s media office said.

The war between the RSF and the army, which began in April of 2023, has escalated recently, with army forces seeking to reclaim territory lost to the RSF early in the conflict in the capital, Khartoum, and beyond.

The army says its units are now less than a kilometer from the presidential palace, which the RSF seized at the war’s outset. In a video address shared on Telegram on Saturday, RSF commander Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo vowed his troops “will not leave the Republican Palace.”

AFP journalists saw thick plumes of smoke rising over central Khartoum as fighting raged across the capital, with gunfire and explosions heard in several areas.

Nationwide, the conflict has killed tens of thousands, uprooted more than 12 million, and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.

In Khartoum alone, at least 3.5 million people have been forced from their homes due to the violence, according to the UN.

Further southwest, in the North Kordofan state capital of El-Obeid — roughly 400 km from Khartoum — two civilians were killed and 15 others wounded after RSF forces shelled residential neighborhoods on Monday morning, a medical source at the city’s main hospital said.

Last month, the military broke through a nearly two-year RSF siege of the southern city, a key crossroads linking Khartoum to the vast Darfur region, which is under near-total RSF control.

Across North Kordofan, more than 200,000 people are currently displaced, while nearly a million are facing acute food insecurity, according to UN figures.

Clashes have also erupted in Blue Nile state, which borders South Sudan and Ethiopia, and where the RSF claimed Sunday to have destroyed military vehicles and taken prisoners from the army and allied forces.

In almost two years, the war has nearly torn Sudan into two, with the RSF in control of almost all of Darfur in the west and parts of the south, while the army holds the country’s north and east.

The army has made gains in central Sudan and Khartoum in recent months and appears to be on the verge of reclaiming the entire capital.


Algeria rejects French deportation drive in latest row

Updated 17 March 2025
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Algeria rejects French deportation drive in latest row

  • Algerian authorities would not accept a list handed over by France in recent days with the names of around 60 Algerians set for deportation
  • French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau has said those selected were 'dangerous' or former convicts

ALGIERS: Algeria on Monday opposed a French bid to deport several dozen Algerians, rejecting “threats” and “ultimatums” by Paris as the two countries’ ties came under increasing strain.
The Algerian foreign ministry said in a statement that the authorities would not accept a list handed over by France in recent days with the names of around 60 Algerians set for deportation.
It cited procedural requirements but also said Algeria “categorically rejects threats and intimidation attempts, as well as.... ultimatums.”
In rejecting the French list, Algeria was “solely motivated by the wish to fulfil its duty of consular protection for its citizens” and to ensure “the rights of individuals subject to deportation measures,” the ministry’s statement said.
Hard-line French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau has said those selected for deportation were “dangerous” or former convicts.
Relations between Paris and Algiers have been strained since French President Emmanuel Macron recognized Moroccan sovereignty of the disputed territory of Western Sahara in July last year.
But they have worsened since Algiers refused to accept the return of undocumented Algerian migrants from France.
Retailleau has led verbal attacks on Algeria in the media, fueling tensions between the countries.
In late February, Prime Minister Francois Bayrou warned Paris could revoke a special status given to Algerians in France, the former colonial power.
Macron has since voiced his support for “renegotiating,” though not annulling, the 1968 agreement Bayrou was referring to.
Algeria was a French colony from the mid-19th century until 1962 and for most of that period was considered an integral part of metropolitan France.
On February 28, the French president said that agreements mandating the automatic return of nationals, signed between the two countries in 1994, “must be fully respected.”
In recent months, France has arrested and deported a number of undocumented Algerians on suspicion of inciting violence, only for Algeria to send back one of those expelled.
France warned it could restrict visas as a result, as well as limit development aid.
Algeria’s government has previously criticized Macron for “blatant and unacceptable interference in an internal Algerian affair.”