A specialist sensor
device on Thursday, detected a heart beat under the debris of a building in
Beirut, which was flattened after a massive blast last month, which killed 191
people, reported AFP.
As per reports, the rescuers
resumed a search Friday, for possible survivors under rubble, buoyed by faint
hopes of a miracle.
Seven people have
still been listed missing, after the blast, which has been considered as Lebanon’s
deadliest peacetime disaster.
Crews of rescue
workers from Chile and Lebanon used their hands on Friday to lift chunks of
rubble from the site between the hard-hit districts of Gemmayzeh and Mar
Mikhail.
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They resumed their
efforts after pausing briefly overnight, an AFP photographer at the scene said.
“We have
excavated rubble but we haven’t reached a conclusion yet,” said George
Abou Moussa of Lebanon’s civil defence. The pulse they detected on Friday had
already slowed significantly compared to a previous recording, said Nicholas
Saade, who coordinates between the Chilean and Lebanese rescuers.
“After removing
the big chunks we scanned again for heartbeats or respiration, it showed low
beat/respiration” levels of seven per minute, he told AFP.
“The reading
before was about 16 to 18,” he added. The area excavated by rescuers was
among the hardest hit by the blast that was so powerful it was heard in Cyprus,
some 240 kilometres (150 miles) away.
The explosion ravaged
swathes of Beirut and piled on new misery for Lebanese already reeling from the
coronavirus pandemic and the country’s worst economic crisis in decades.
A sniffer dog deployed
by Chilean rescuers on Wednesday night had responded to a scent from the site
of a collapsed building in Gemmayzeh, Beirut governor Marwan Abboud said.
After detecting a
pulse on Thursday, Lebanese emergency workers teamed up with the Chileans
determine whether there were any survivors.
News of the search
drew crowds of people hopeful that another life could be saved.
