![]() In a mass commemorating the victims on Thursday, Lebanon’s top Christian cleric Patriarch Beshara al-Rai said God “condemned” officials stalling the domestic investigation and reiterated calls for an international probe. An investigation into the blast has been stalled for more than six months. The prime minister at the time also said he had been informed – but no one warned the population about the dangers of the materials. But he and his Iranian backed Hezbollah militant group refused to Allow any international investigation of the blast ![]() Lebanon’s current President Michel Aoun said days after the blast that he had been warned about the chemical stores at the port and asked security chiefs to do what is necessary. Several senior officials have been accused of responsibility but, to date, none have been held to account – symptomatic, critics say, of a governing elite hamstrung by corruption and on whose watch Lebanon has descended into a political and economic crisis. “What happened was not a mistake, it was a massacre. “It’s important for me to be here today because it’s very important for us to ask for justice and accountability for what happened,” said Stephanie Moukheiber, 27, a Lebanese woman living in Canada for the last decade, who decided to spend the summer in Lebanon. One of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, it was caused by massive stores of ammonium nitrate kept at the site in the port and neglected since 2013. The blast damages swathes of the city on Aug 4, 2020, killing at least 220 people. The protesters, wearing t-shirts stamped with blood-red handprints, were marching from Lebanon’s justice ministry to the city’s waterfront and then to parliament in the centre of Beirut. It was the same smoke coming from the silos up to the sky,” said 31-year-old protester Samer al-Khoury. “Seeing the smoke coming out – especially that I was here during the blast – triggers a very bad memory. Protesters covered their mouths in disbelief. The concrete silos cracked and fell after burning for several weeks, sending a cloud of smoke and dust into the sky. In a grim reminder of the disaster, several grain silos that were left heavily damaged by the blast collapsed on Thursday afternoon, only hundreds of metres from where crowds were gathering at the city’s waterfront.
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