The death toll from a massive blast at Beirut’s port has risen again to 137, as the Lebanese army took control of the site on the first day of a two-week state of emergency.
The new casualty figures on Thursday morning include at least 5,000 injured and a health ministry spokesman said dozens were still missing. This toll is not final, he said.
As volunteers worked with the army to clean up shattered streets, buildings and hospitals, the government said it had formed an investigation committee to look into the explosion, which appears to have been set off by 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate that had been stored at the port since 2014.
Lebanese officials have started blaming each other for leaving the highly explosive substance sitting so close to residential neighbourhoods for six years. The ammonium nitrate was taken from a ship that docked in Beirut in 2013 and was apparently abandoned by its Russian owner and mostly Ukrainian crew.
Badri Daher, the director general of Lebanese customs, said on Wednesday his office had sent six letters to the country’s judiciary urging them to deal with the chemicals either by exporting the load, reselling it or giving it to the army.
An unspecified number of port officials have been ordered to be placed under house arrest pending the investigation, which is scheduled to take five days. It will report to the national cabinet, which will refer its findings to the judiciary.
Amnesty International was among the organisations calling for an independent investigation into the circumstances leading up to the explosion.
Whatever may have caused the explosion, including the possibility of a large amount of ammonium nitrate stored unsafely, Amnesty is calling for an international mechanism to be promptly set up to investigate how this happened, said Julie Verhaar, the group’s acting secretary general.
Protests have been planned for central Beirut on Thursday afternoon as residents of the capital seethed at a disaster that appears to have been foreseeable and frequently warned about.