Lebanon ex-interior minister accuses Israel of involvement in Beirut blast

Former interior minister Nohad Machnouk said Israel was 'clearly' responsible for the devastating blast at Beirut's port.

MENA

3 min read

The New Arab Staff

13 August, 2020

The huge chemical explosion that hit Beirut's port has claimed over 170 lives [AFP/Getty]

A former Lebanese interior minister has accused Israel of involvement in the catastrophic blast at Beirut's port last week.

The August 4 detonation of an abandoned shipment of ammonium nitrate in Beirut port's Hangar 12, after an initial blast and fire, has cost more than 170 lives, injured thousands and left hundreds of thousands temporarily homeless.

Former interior minister Nohad Machnouk said Israel was "clearly" responsible at a press conference on Wednesday, Asia Times reported.

"This operation in Beirut was carried out by Israel in a clear and explicit manner," Machnouk said. "It is clear we are looking at a crime against humanity, and therefore no one dares to claim responsibility for it."

Israeli government sources denied any involvement in the incident soon after the explosion occurred and hours later the government offered humanitarian aid to Lebanon.

Read more: Israel's Lebanon aid offer unlikely to find a taker

Machnouk, who was appointed interior minister in 2016, is the first senior Lebanese politician to point the finger at Israel.

The explosion is widely believed to have been triggered by 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored at the port unsafely after its confiscation by Port of Beirut Customs in 2013.

Machnouk claimed in his comments on Wednesday that half the amount of ammonium nitrate had been stolen.

Twitter Post

"What judge would dare to declare that the size of the explosion was 1,350 tonnes, not 2,750?” he said.

"Where did the remaining 1,400 tonnes disappear?"

Questions remain as to the initial cause of the blast. "The cause of the first fire/explosion is still an unanswered question," an anonymous US official told Asia Times.

A US military explosives expert told the news outlet that his contacts in the Lebanese military claim the initial blast was an "act of sabotage".

Machnouk claimed on Wednesday that missile remnants had been found in the blast rubble, accusing the authorities of covering up the truth.

The explosion, Lebanon's worst peacetime disaster, caused devastation across Beirut and is widely seen as a direct consequence of state incompetence and corruption.

Documents revealed following the explosion show the highest of authorities knew about the unstable store of ammonium nitrate at the port in July.

Customs and port officials had alerted the judiciary of the dangerous storage of the substance years earlier.

Conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories blaming Israel for the disaster in the Lebanese capital have also spread like wildfire on social media.

A video showing a missile in the sky was quickly touted as proof of an attack by Lebanon's former wartime enemy and neighbour Israel.

But verification by AFP shows the missile image was digitally pasted into the video, after several earlier postings of the same footage which showed no such projectile.

A separate posting of a rocket crashing into another site in Beirut port is marked as "filmed by thermal camera".

Read more: The Beirut blast: An accident in name only

But a filter was found to have been added to the footage and a missile inserted.

To back up the finger-pointing at Israel, with which Lebanon technically remains at war, online videos allegedly show a drone dropping an unidentified object over the port, seconds before the blast.

It has been authenticated but with no connection to August 4, and linked in fact to Israeli drones over south Lebanon days earlier, according to several local media.