Beirut Port Blast Survivors Relive Trauma as Silos Burns

Smoke rises from the north block silos which were damaged during the August 2020 massive explosion in the port, in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, July 28, 2022. (AP)
Smoke rises from the north block silos which were damaged during the August 2020 massive explosion in the port, in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, July 28, 2022. (AP)
TT
20

Beirut Port Blast Survivors Relive Trauma as Silos Burns

Smoke rises from the north block silos which were damaged during the August 2020 massive explosion in the port, in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, July 28, 2022. (AP)
Smoke rises from the north block silos which were damaged during the August 2020 massive explosion in the port, in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, July 28, 2022. (AP)

Rita Qadan’s heart skips a beat whenever talks about how she survived the devastating explosion in Beirut's Port two years ago. And every time she sees the massive port silos, she is reminded again of her trauma.

The port’s grain silos destroyed in the blast — a massive, charred ruin jutting into the sky — has been burning for weeks after remnants of the grains that withstood the 2020 explosion started fermenting and ignited in the summer heat. The Lebanese government said last week the fire expanded after flames reached nearby electrical cables. Experts warn the structure could collapse at any time.

On that fateful Aug. 4, 2020, hundreds of tons of explosive ammonium nitrate improperly stored in the port for years, detonated, killing more than 200 people injuring over 6,000. Entire parts of the city around the port were destroyed in the blast, and the tragedy became a searing trauma on the psyche of the entire Lebanese population.

Today, Qadan still works as a concierge at a building in Beirut's Mar Mikhael neighborhood, where she has lived for decades, her small apartment tucked in the corner of the ground floor.

The area along Beirut's waterfront has a direct view of the port and the smoldering silos. The smoke brings back horrible memories, Qadan says as she waters her plants.

The stench, seeping into her modest two-room apartment, is dizzying, she says. “I just wear my mask and stay indoors,” Qadan told The Associated Press, her voice trembling. “I’m really scared that they could fall.”

Emmanuel Durand, a French civil engineer who volunteered for the government-commissioned team of experts, says the north block's collapse in the port is inevitable and just a matter of time.

In Geneva, he has been monitoring the tilting silos from thousands of miles away using data produced by sensors he installed over a year ago, and updating a team of Lebanese government and security officials on the developments in a WhatsApp group.

“Two weeks ago, the silos were tilting at 2 millimeters per day, and in the last week that has accelerated to 2.5 millimeters per hour, and that rapidly accelerates as the fire continues and causes more structural damage,” Durand told the AP. “It’s now ... a steady 6 millimeters per hour.”

Even before the fire, the northern block was on its last legs. “The fire is just finishing it off,” he said.

Durand first visited Beirut as a volunteer two weeks after the 2020 explosion, assessing damaged buildings with engineering students. He had no idea the port silos would later come occupy so much of his free time.

“I’m very wired with that particular site and with the country,” he said. “All this has been an emotional experience, but as long as nobody gets killed, I’ll be okay.”

From work, Mohammad Daife can also see the Beirut port silos. Daife, whose family-run company provides customs assistance to shipping clients, said he remained in shock for three months after the blast.

He closes his windows and keeps the air conditioner running to avoid the stench “We are very disturbed ... something could happen to our employees and families,” Daife said. “I don’t know what the government will do, but I hope they make a decision so this can end.”

Johnny Assaf can also see the silos from his small real estate agency. In the explosion, shards of glass from the windows pierced his back — one piece still hasn't been removed.

“Our fear is that it tips over, because we don’t what could happen to us if it did,” he said.

The Lebanese health and environment ministries on Monday urged residents in the area to close their windows and wear facemasks, offering instructions on how to clean dust from their cars and homes should the silos fall. But the residents are still fearful.

“My friends are leaving the area,” Assaf explained. “But there are people with nowhere else to go.”



Palestinian Families Flee West Bank Homes in Droves as Israel Confronts Militants

Israel expanded its West Bank operation, which began last month, to Nur Shams in recent days © Zain JAAFAR / AFP
Israel expanded its West Bank operation, which began last month, to Nur Shams in recent days © Zain JAAFAR / AFP
TT
20

Palestinian Families Flee West Bank Homes in Droves as Israel Confronts Militants

Israel expanded its West Bank operation, which began last month, to Nur Shams in recent days © Zain JAAFAR / AFP
Israel expanded its West Bank operation, which began last month, to Nur Shams in recent days © Zain JAAFAR / AFP

By car and on foot, through muddy olive groves and snipers’ sight lines, tens of thousands of Palestinians in recent weeks have fled Israeli military operations across the northern West Bank — the largest displacement in the occupied territory since the 1967 Mideast war.

After announcing a widespread crackdown against West Bank militants on Jan. 21 — just two days after its ceasefire deal with Hamas in Gaza — Israeli forces descended on the restive city of Jenin, as they have dozens of times since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

But unlike past operations, Israeli forces then pushed deeper and more forcefully into several other nearby towns, including Tulkarem, Far’a and Nur Shams, scattering families and stirring bitter memories of the 1948 war over Israel’s creation, The AP reported.

During that war, 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes in what is now Israel. That Nakba, or “catastrophe,” as Palestinians call it, gave rise to the crowded West Bank towns now under assault and still known as refugee camps.

“This is our nakba,” said Abed Sabagh, 53, who bundled his seven children into the car on Feb. 9 as sound bombs blared in Nur Shams camp, where he was born to parents who fled the 1948 war.

Tactics from Gaza Humanitarian officials say they haven’t seen such displacement in the West Bank since the 1967 Mideast war, when Israel captured the territory west of the Jordan River, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, displacing another 300,000 Palestinians.

“This is unprecedented. When you add to this the destruction of infrastructure, we’re reaching a point where the camps are becoming uninhabitable," said Roland Friedrich, director of West Bank affairs for the UN Palestinian refugee agency. More than 40,100 Palestinians have fled their homes in the ongoing military operation, according to the agency.

Experts say that Israel's tactics in the West Bank are becoming almost indistinguishable from those deployed in Gaza. Already, President Donald Trump's plan for the mass transfer of Palestinians out of Gaza has emboldened Israel's far-right to renew calls for annexation of the West Bank.

"The idea of ‘cleansing’ the land of Palestinians is more popular today than ever before," said Yagil Levy, head of the Institute for the Study of Civil-Military Relations at Britain’s Open University.

The Israeli army denies issuing evacuation orders in the West Bank. It said troops secure passages for those wanting to leave on their own accord.

Seven minutes to leave home. Over a dozen displaced Palestinians interviewed in the last week said they did not flee their homes out of fear, but on the orders of Israeli security forces. Associated Press journalists in the Nur Shams camp also heard Israeli soldiers shouting through mosque megaphones, ordering people to leave.

Some displaced families said soldiers were polite, knocking on doors and assuring them they could return when the army left. Others said they were ruthless, ransacking rooms, waving rifles and hustling residents out of their homes despite pleas for more time.

“I was sobbing, asking them, ‘Why do you want me to leave my house?’ My baby is upstairs, just let me get my baby please,’” Ayat Abdullah, 30, recalled from a shelter for displaced people in the village of Kafr al-Labd. “They gave us seven minutes. I brought my children, thank God. Nothing else."

Told to make their own way, Abdullah trudged 10 kilometers (six miles) on a path lighted only by the glow from her phone as rain turned the ground to mud. She said she clutched her children tight, braving possible snipers that had killed a 23-year-old pregnant woman just hours earlier on Feb. 9.

Her 5-year-old son, Nidal, interrupted her story, pursing his lips together to make a loud buzzing sound.

“You’re right, my love," she replied. “That’s the sound the drones made when we left home.”

Hospitality, for now In the nearby town of Anabta, volunteers moved in and out of mosques and government buildings that have become makeshift shelters — delivering donated blankets, serving bitter coffee, distributing boiled eggs for breakfast and whipping up vats of rice and chicken for dinner.

Residents have opened their homes to families fleeing Nur Shams and Tulkarem.

“This is our duty in the current security situation,” said Thabet A’mar, the mayor of Anabta.

But he stressed that the town’s welcoming hand should not be mistaken for anything more.

“We insist that their displacement is temporary,” he said.

Staying put When the invasion started on Feb. 2, Israeli bulldozers ruptured underground pipes. Taps ran dry. Sewage gushed. Internet service was shut off. Schools closed. Food supplies dwindled. Explosions echoed.

Ahmad Sobuh could understand how his neighbors chose to flee the Far’a refugee camp during Israel's 10-day incursion. But he scavenged rainwater to drink and hunkered down in his home, swearing to himself, his family and the Israeli soldiers knocking at his door that he would stay.

The soldiers advised against that, informing Sobuh's family on Feb. 11 that, because a room had raised suspicion for containing security cameras and an object resembling a weapon, they would blow up the second floor.

The surveillance cameras, which Israeli soldiers argued could be exploited by Palestinian militants, were not unusual in the volatile neighborhood, Sobuh said, as families can observe street battles and Israeli army operations from inside.

But the second claim sent him clambering upstairs, where he found his nephew’s water pipe, shaped like a rifle.

Hours later, the explosion left his nephew's room naked to the wind and shattered most others. It was too dangerous to stay.

“They are doing everything they can to push us out,” he said of Israel's military, which, according to the UN agency for refugees, has demolished hundreds of homes across the four camps this year.

The Israeli army has described its ongoing campaign as a crucial counterterrorism effort to prevent attacks like Oct. 7, and said steps were taken to mitigate the impact on civilians.

A chilling return The first thing Doha Abu Dgheish noticed about her family's five-story home 10 days after Israeli troops forced them to leave, she said, was the smell.

Venturing inside as Israeli troops withdrew from Far'a camp, she found rotten food and toilets piled with excrement. Pet parakeets had vanished from their cages. Pages of the Quran had been defaced with graphic drawings. Israeli forces had apparently used explosives to blow every door off its hinges, even though none had been locked.

Rama, her 11-year-old daughter with Down syndrome, screamed upon finding her doll’s skirt torn and its face covered with more graphic drawings.

AP journalists visited the Abu Dgheish home on Feb. 12, hours after their return.

Nearly two dozen Palestinians interviewed across the four West Bank refugee camps this month described army units taking over civilian homes to use as a dormitories, storerooms or lookout points. The Abu Dgheish family accused Israeli soldiers of vandalizing their home, as did multiple families in Far’a.

The Israeli army blamed militants for embedding themselves in civilian infrastructure. Soldiers may be “required to operate from civilian homes for varying periods," it said, adding that the destruction of civilian property was a violation of the military's rules and does not conform to its values.

It said “any exceptional incidents that raise concerns regarding a deviation from these orders” are “thoroughly addressed,” without elaborating.

For Abu Dgheish, the mess was emblematic of the emotional whiplash of return. No one knows when they’ll have to flee again.

“It’s like they want us to feel that we’re never safe,” she said. ”That we have no control.”