"Lebanon's President, Michel Aoun, blamed the detonation on 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate that he said had been stored unsafely at a warehouse in the port.
A similar amount of the chemical arrived on a Moldovan-flagged cargo ship, the MV Rhosus, which docked in Beirut in 2013 after suffering technical problems while sailing from Georgia to Mozambique.
The Rhosus was inspected, banned from leaving and was shortly afterwards abandoned by its owners, according to Shiparrested.com. Its cargo was reportedly transferred to Warehouse 12 following a court order, and should have been disposed of or resold." BBC
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The pictures are worth far more than any words of mine. pl
Truly shocking pictures. I have seen someone claim that this was the largest single explosion in a city since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Daily Mail has some interesting photos which purport to show the warehouse on fire and the same warehouse (same white square on door) pictured previously and full of ton bags of clearly marked “Nitroprill”. Might this be a generic product version of Australian company Orica’s trademarked “Nitropril”? The Safety Data Sheet for this product (see link) says the following:
“Explosion risk in case of fire, especially if contaminated or confined. Molten product may explode from friction, shock or containment. In the case of an intense fire evacuate all personnel to at least 1000 m.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8599453/Last-photo-emerges-firefighters-Beiruts-Warehouse-12-blast.html
http://www.oricaminingservices.com/au/en/product/products_and_services/bulk_systems/nitropril/56
Follow up to my previous comment:
The Daily Mail article includes video of the warehouse on fire. The second sequence in it (starts 24 seconds in) appears to show fireworks cooking off in the warehouse – same one with the white square on the door. Did they store fireworks in the same warehouse?
Another video on YouTube shot from a balcony shows the fire and fireworks going off and then the blast. If you go through this one frame by frame at the point of the explosion (30 second mark) it looks to me like it is centered on the near end of the building, from the observer’s POV. The center of the fireball is just to the left of the pole in front of the warehouse. It certainly looks like it is distinct from the fireworks & fire in the background (the other end of the same warehouse?).
No idea if this is important, I’ll leave the analysis to the experts here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T25rxrMkWxQ
I have no opinion on this video. Some of you in the group will have specialised knowledge and a worthwhile opinion.
https://www.facebook.com/okram.emil.7/videos/611795053101343
Magnier calls fake
https://mobile.twitter.com/ejmalrai/status/1291449139423830022
james IMO fake
All
It has to be expected that the Oh so clever Lebanese would attempt a CYA try like this.
@ P Armstrong
Check Elijah’s new article ( available to everyone – no pay wall)
https://ejmagnier.com/2020/08/07/the-beirut-explosion-who-is-responsible/
The elite which has been “governing” Lebanon did NOTHING even after they have been warned over the years about the dangers , the latest one last year.
How is the Lebanese harbour organised? It is controlled by a kind of local mafia composed of high ranking officers, customs directors, administrators and security officials. Each person in charge has been appointed by a political leader offering his men immunity and protection. The harbour produces immense amounts of money and bribes are the daily bread of all those who run this “show”. In the face of such corruption, it is now clear that scientific expertise about what is happening to store AN and the conditions in which 2,750 tons of it are stored counted for little. Actually, many officers in this Port have no competence for the jobs they do and are appointed, as we have seen, by favouritism and through political connections. This is indeed the case for the Director of Customs and the Army intelligence, General S., responsible for harbour movements and contents. So, given all that, when a problem or a disaster occurs, as it did on Tuesday, it will obviously be very difficult to find those really responsible. So how did the conditions for this AN explosion arise?
I’ve been thinking a lot about a recent post in which a space-based directed energy weapon was broadly hinted at as causing fires and damage in Iran. Could that weapon have been trained on a huge pile of AN degrading over six years in a hot, poorly ventilated warehouse?
Beaver I was just about to post Magnier’s piece. It seems to me that he has answered all questions satisfactorily. Human error in all its varieties.
Images of a missile
https://www.facebook.com/787090184757029/videos/2460742190883672/
and of similar explosion type:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VNrJO7EY5Q
@J Casey –
Magnier’s article makes good sense. Although I’d need more evidence before believing that the AN was destined for Fábrica de Explosivos de Moçambique. That rumor seems to have started because of the FEM abbreviation on the bags of AN.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EexPDn-X0AMSjR0?format=jpg&name=large
But FEM printed on shipments like that typically mean that the material was handled per the safety and regulatory recommendations of the Fédération Européenne de la Manutention, also known as the European Materials Handling Federation.
And the bags are clearly labelled High Density Ammonium Nitrate (also known as HDAN). HDAN is manufactured to be a dry fertilizer product. It is different from Low Density Ammonium Nitrate (LDAN), which is the grade used primarily in explosive applications for quarrying and mining:
https://arrmaz.com/industries/fertilizer-production/ammonium-nitrate-fertilizer-hdan-can/
But I’ll agree with Magnier’s assertion in a heartbeat if a bonafide delivery contract is produced.
They are not clever, but cunning.
If they were clever, they would have found a way to work together after their Ottoman masters left.
Babak
They are also killers rather than fighters. I also agree that Salafism will only subside slowly.