Four cereal towers collapsed this Thursday in the port of Beirut, shortly before the the arrival of hundreds of people who demonstrated to demand justice for the more than 200 dead in the explosion registered in the same place two years ago.
The collapse came less than an hour before hundreds of people gathered outside the port facility to mark the second anniversary of the blast.
Authorities had already evacuated the port area earlier this week, after an initial section of the silos collapsed on Sunday. As a precautionary measureso there is no indication that anyone was injured.
Beirut port silo section collapsed after fire
On Sunday, a section of the silos had collapsed, after a fire that lasted more than a week and ended up fermenting the cereals, setting them on fire.
The protesters were to gather in the port of Beirut to commemorate the second anniversary of the explosion in the port of the capital, that two years ago caused the death of more than 200 peopleit injured more than 6,000 and destroyed entire neighborhoods.
With 50 years of existence and 48 meters high, the silos were a symbol of the tragedy, as they were the only local structure left standing after the explosion.
The protesters began three marches this morning and had agreed to meet at 5:00 p.m. local time (3:00 p.m. in Lisbon) at the city’s seaport.
One of the protests began at the Karantina fire station, an area next to the port, where 10 firefighters died trying to extinguish the fire that caused the explosion.
Some two hundred people gathered at these facilities, some of whom wore white clothes with red paint stains to symbolize the spilled blood and others carried photographs of the victims or Lebanese flags.
Many of the protesters carried banners with slogans such as “Until we meet again, we will continue fighting for justice” or “We need justice with the same magnitude as the disaster”.
The investigation of the tragedy has been suspended since last December, in the sequence of the last more than 25 petitions filed by ex-responsáveis of elevated positions that are suspected of not case against the judge in charge of the investigation, whose work has faced recurrent obstructions, second several organizations of human rights.
Humanitarian organizations and relatives of victims want an international investigation to be carried out, given the lack of progress in the Lebanese justice system, and have asked the UN Human Rights Council to send an investigation mission to Beirut.
The tons of ammonium nitrate that exploded in the city in August 2020 had been stored in a port warehouse for several years, without any security measures, with leaders such as Lebanese President Michel Aoun and then-Prime Minister Hasan Diab acknowledging that they knew about his existence.
After an emotional act in the courtyard of the fire station, the march started from Karantina, between applause and the sound of drums and trumpetsdriven by a fire truck and a light vehicle to which was attached a red-dyed Lebanese flag.
Another of the marches met in the city center, while a third set out in the early afternoon in front of the Palace of Justice and stopped at the French embassy in Beirut to ask for support in their fight for justice.
Source: Observadora
