‘I felt an airstrike’: Panic, horror in city after twin explosions at Beirut port

Two huge explosions near the centre of Beirut sent shockwaves across the Lebanese capital, shaking buildings and shattering glasses. While one Lebanon resident described it as an airstrike, another said that it felt like an earthquake.

“I felt an airstrike, I live in Hazmieh not even close to the Beirut port, and this felt like an airstrike, I know what an airstrike is, I was caught up in one years ago,” Luna Safwan, an independent journalist in Lebanon, told Opoyi. Hazmieh is over 6 kilmetres away from Beirut Port, where the blasts took place.

Safwan on Twitter described how she felt as if a plane was flying over their house and her desk shook after the first explosion.

The journalist describes the second blast being even more intense. “I was trying to explain to dad (on my left) that there’s an explosion and that we need to move, I turned right, the second explosion happened, my mom and I flew across the room and all the doors were suddenly opened,” Safwan said.

Video footage of the second blast showed an enormous orange fireball that dwarfed nearby buildings and sent a devastating tornado-like shockwave ripping through the city. Dozens of people are feared to have been killed and injured in the explosions. A soldier at the port, who asked not to be named, told AFP: “It’s a catastrophe inside. There are corpses on the ground. Ambulances are still lifting the dead.”

“Buildings are shaking,” tweeted one resident, while another wrote: “An enormous, deafening explosion just engulfed Beirut. Heard it from miles away.”

A woman in the city centre Tuesday told AFP: “It felt like an earthquake … I felt it was bigger than the explosion in the assassination of Rafic Hariri in 2005”.

The cause of the explosions is believed to be old explosive material at port, reported AFP quoting security official.