Further collapse of city’s grain silos, almost to the minute of blast, seen as symbol of failure to bring anyone to justice

For two years, Beirut’s crumbing grain silos had teetered over the ruins of the nearby port, a battered backdrop to a broken city that has barely stayed on its feet.

Almost to the minute of the second anniversary of the Beirut port explosion that destroyed them and pulverised nearby neighbours, a huge slither of the silos collapsed, showcasing yet again the dysfunction of Lebanon and the failed quest to bring those responsible to justice.

Blaze caused by fermenting grains had been smouldering for weeks, with people told to stay indoors

A section of the huge grain silos at Beirut’s port, shredded in the 2020 explosion in the Lebanese capital, collapsed on Sunday after a weeks-long fire triggered by grains that had fermented and ignited in the summer heat.

The northern block of the silos fell in a huge cloud of dust after what sounded like an explosion. It was not immediately clear if anyone was injured.

Armed clashes erupt at demonstrations demanding end to judge’s investigation of huge blast last year

At least six people have died in Beirut’s worst street violence in 13 years, as hundreds of armed militia men took to the streets and much of the city was forced into lockdown by heavy fighting.

The bloody violence took on a sectarian tone that invoked images of the Lebanese civil war and alarmed residents who had long feared that the multiple crises ravaging the country could spark a deadly conflagration.

One year on from the huge explosion in the port of Beirut in Lebanon the devastation from the blast is still visible

At least 200 people were killed, and more than 6,000 injured in the Beirut blast that devastated the port area on 4 August 2020. The explosion is believed to have been caused by an estimated 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse.

Away from the broken grain silos, and their rotting contents, Lebanon remains paralysed and anguished. The investigation into the blast has flatlined, and its perpetrators are as far away from accountability as ever. The global aid pledged in the wake of the destruction remains forsaken by the country’s rulers, who prefer the narrow privileges that flowed to them from a crippled system to a global rescue plan that could save the country.

Lebanese capital remains a shell of a city as efforts to find who is to blame for tragedy have made little progress

When his workplace blew to pieces, dockworker Yusuf Shehadi was waiting to hear back from colleagues who had scrambled to help firefighters extinguish a blaze in the port of Beirut. The fire was bad and getting worse, they told him in their last conversation before a giant explosion killed them, and 210 others, a year ago today.

The catastrophic blast laid to ruin the place Shehadi had worked for a decade. And he immediately knew its cause. “I had taken the nitrate from the dock to the hangar six years earlier,” he said of the massive stockpile of military-grade fertiliser that he had helped move from a freighter to a nearby hangar in 2014.

The response to the explosion in August 2020 has been marked by chaos and paralysis in what is now a failed state

At ground zero of Lebanon’s apocalypse a stench of dead rats seeps from hulking piles of rotting grain. Broken silos teeter above, their sides ripped apart by the catastrophic blast that also broke the soul of Beirut; the contents that should have fed a nation still lie spilt over the gaping ruins of its main port.

A year ago this week, one of the planet’s gravest industrial accidents caused one of its biggest ever explosions, shattering a city that was already at a tipping point. The mushroom cloud of chemicals that soared above the Lebanese capital on 4 August 2020 and the seismic force of the shock wave that ravaged its homes and businesses were carried around the world in high-definition horror. Even amid the chaos of a country that had allowed this to happen to its people, this was surely a moment of reckoning.

Police have fired tear gas to disperse relatives of victims of last year's Beirut port blast who were protesting outside the home of the caretaker interior minister over his refusal to let the lead investigator question Lebanon's security chief. Nearly a year after the explosion, which killed more than 200 people, wounded thousands and devastated swathes of the capital, many Lebanese are furious that no senior officials have been held to account.

• EU prepares sanctions against Lebanon leaders a year after Beirut blast

Lebanon’s August explosion was one of the largest non-nuclear blasts ever. Survivors tell their stories using the media they recorded on their smartphones

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