Comment: See also:

• American university students are coddled, thin-skinned snowflakes, and social media is to blame
• German officials warn of "virtue terror" after Stuttgart mayor calls for gender-neutral vocabulary

Comment: The woman who was killed is another unseen death connected to the lockdown. Why isn't this even a part of the conversation?

Comment: Fireworks? That second blast looks like it was from at least a thousand-pound bomb. The energy it released is associated with only the largest (non-nuclear) bombs and volcanic eruptions.

In the meantime, we fear a lot of people may have been killed here.


Lebanon newspaper The Daily Star suffered massive damage to their main office:


Lebanon's port area, and thus a key economic lifeline for the small Mediterranean country, is certainly wrecked:


Another apocalyptic scene: a priest giving mass is felled from falling debris as he flees a church somewhere in the city:


Here's a still from the 'second' explosion:

UPDATE 9:30PM CET

Turns out 'fireworks' is indeed just a rumor (one started by Lebanon's branch of the Global Fake News Factory):


That global media instantly went with that as a cause is likely a clue as to the real cause. Perhaps it was a Hezbollah munitions storage site, which 'somebody' eliminated, taking Beirut's shipping lifeline with it, along with thousands of lives & livelihoods.

Update 9:45PM CET

Here's video footage of the event from real close up:


Strangely (or not), the Israelis are piping up to say that the warehouse stored "munitions confiscated from Hezbollah." So possible motive begins taking shape.


Furthermore:


In fact, on July 31st, the Israeli Defense Minister specifically threatened to "bomb Lebanese infrastructure," before placing the IDF on 'high alert'.

Update 10PM CET

The closest type of explosion we've seen to this is the one that occurred on 5 August 2019, one year ago tomorrow. It happened when a major munitions facility in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia exploded:


In fact, the massive blast in Russia this time last year was part of a string of strange explosions at Russian military facilities.

Today's explosion in Beirut, however, is an order of magnitude more powerful, and thus destructive.

Update 5 Aug 2020 - 08:30 CET

US president Trump has told reporters that, after speaking with "our top generals," he (and they) seem to believe this was deliberate:


The US Geological Survey reports that the explosion "generated seismic waves equivalent of a magnitude 3.3 earthquake," with the caveat that if this had occurred underground, the seismic reading would have been significantly higher.

Lebanon was already 'on the brink' before this event. Here journalist and founder of the news site Beirut Report, Habib Battah, explains the dire state the small country is in:


Update 5 Aug 2020 - 13:30 CET

The force of the blast left an enormous crater in Beirut's port:
Update 5 Aug 2020 - 18:30 CET

The ammonium nitrate connection

Lebanese officials have indeed acknowledged that over 2,700 tons of confiscated ammonium nitrate had been stored in the warehouse in question for the last six years. The presence of the nitrate was apparently well-known, and an investigation had been launched 5 months ago with the goal of preventing any mishaps. For the story of the initial confiscation followed by bureaucratic deadlock, see here and here.

The Lebanese Supreme Defence Council has claimed that a spark from welding work at the site may have caused the initial fire - workmen were supposedly there repairing a faulty door.

But it doesn't really matter whether or not ammonium nitrate was stored there. It requires multiple chemical processes before it becomes an effective explosive. As a fertilizer in farming, it is stored in large amounts in rural areas all around the world. That wouldn't be common practice if there was a general risk of it exploding.

The most likely scenario in Beirut seems to be that a large bomb was transported and assembled there. The fire that preceded the explosion was perhaps a decoy, along with some amount of fireworks thrown in as further decoy. And then the bomb was remote-detonated.

Hezbollah arms storage?

Some have alleged that the port was used as weapons storage for Hezbollah. The head of the port claims no explosives were stored near the substances alleged to have been responsible. HRW chief Roth posted then deleted an unhinged tweet blaming Hezbollah, speculating that blowing up the port was their way of saying "don't mess with us for allegedly killing former Lebanese PM Hariri".


In either case, there is the potential for sabotage (in addition to negligence and corruption), given the relatively high profile of both the nitrate and the alleged Hezbollah weapons. (See this unverifiable report from progressive Jewish writer Richard Silberstein, for example, claiming a "confidential, highly-informed Israeli source" said Israel was responsible. They say the Israelis wanted to destroy a Hezbollah arms depot, but didn't know about the nitrate and accidentally caused a bigger explosion in the process.)


PM Diab has asked for help from the international community and promised an investigation followed by justice. Both the U.S. and Israel have pledged to offer assistance. Russia is sending a mobile hospital and rescue unit. Among the 100+ dead was top Christian party official Nizar Najarian. Hundreds are still missing - some may still be buried under the rubble. Over 4,000 were injured, and up to 300,000 Lebanese have been left homeless.

For more pictures and footage of the destruction, see here, here,