Lebanon marks the first anniversary of one of the world’s biggest-ever, non-nuclear explosions that destroyed much of Beirut’s port and devastated swaths of the capital.On 4 August 2020, a large amount of ammonium nitrate stored at the port of the city of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, exploded, causing 218 deaths, including at least 13 Lebanese Armenians, 7,500 injuries, and US$15 billion in property damage, and leaving an estimated 300,000 people homeless.A cargo of 2,750 tonnes of the substance (equivalent to around 1.1 kilotons of TNT) had been stored in a warehouse without proper safety measures for the previous six years, after having been confiscated by the Lebanese authorities from the abandoned ship MV Rhosus.The explosion was preceded by a fire in the same warehouse, but as of April 2021, the exact cause of the detonation is still under investigation.
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