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Continue reading...Category Archives: Lebanon
At least 20 killed and 79 injured in fuel tank explosion in Lebanon
Hospitals were reportedly turning away burns victims after the blast at a storage tank that had been confiscated by the army
At least 20 people were killed and 79 others injured when a fuel tank exploded in Lebanon’s northern region of Akkar, the Red Cross said on Sunday.
The cause of the explosion was not immediately clear.
Continue reading...Belarus repression and the Taliban advance: human rights this fortnight – in pictures
A round-up of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Thailand to Mexico
Continue reading...True Stories: Spaces review – impressive short docs from folk horror to a Lebanese marvel
This short film collection from the True Story platform ranges across continents to look at how we interact with our environments
Deeply psychogeographical, this collection of documentary shorts from the streaming platform True Story roams among spaces old and new, and across continents. Personal and public memories are intertwined, creating portraits of how human beings interact with their environments, and vice versa.
Paul Heintz’s nocturnal Shānzhài Screens is a meditative study of liminal urban spaces, shot in a Chinese district that specialises in fine-art reproductions. Rectangular frames populate the screen, from flickering apartment windows, hurried video calls, to endless replicas of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. Authenticity is elusive, and loneliness reigns.
Continue reading...Israel launches airstrikes in Lebanon in response to rockets
Israeli military says jets struck rocket launch sites, in a marked escalation of hostilities
Israel escalated its response to rocket attacks this week by launching airstrikes on Lebanon, the Israeli military has said.
The military said in a statement that jets struck the launch sites from which rockets had been fired over the previous day, as well as an additional target used to attack Israel in the past. Several militant groups operate in Lebanon but none claimed responsibility.
Continue reading...Beirut blast: protests mark one year since deadly port explosion – video report
Thousands of Lebanese people gathered in Beirut to mark the first anniversary of a catastrophic explosion at the port, holding pictures of the dead and demanding justice.
No senior official has been held to account for the disaster, caused by a huge quantity of ammonium nitrate stored unsafely at the port for years. infuriating many Lebanese as their country also endures financial collapse.
As a memorial service got under way at the port, water cannon and teargas were fired at protesters who had been throwing stones towards security forces near parliament
Continue reading...A bride waving a flag in bombed-out Beirut: Christine Spengler’s best photograph
‘Shortly after arriving, I was kidnapped by a militia group who said I was a spy. A decade later, I went back to show life and beauty returning to the city’
I spent my childhood in Madrid and I went to the Prado every week from the age of seven. I would cry at the works by Goya. His paintings of the Spanish war of independence moved me like nothing else. I never grew up around photography – I grew up around Goya. Even as a child, I was attracted to the dark fates of the world.
Over the course of my career, I’ve covered 13 conflicts, more than many of the famous war photographers of my generation. I’ve worked in Vietnam and Cambodia, Eritrea and Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and Iran. I’ve always tried to capture a glimpse of hope against a background of drama and destruction. That has not always been possible.
Continue reading...‘No sense of safety’: how the Beirut blast created a mental health crisis
A year on from the devastating explosion, people are struggling to sleep and PTSD is widespread – amid economic chaos
Rayan Khatoun has been dreading 4 August. She has been constantly on edge as the anniversary of the port explosion in Beirut approached.
The blast threw Khatoun into a wall as she came home from work and left her with a head injury, a fractured cheekbone and torn tendons. Since then, she has suffered from recurring nightmares, insomnia and anxiety attacks.
Continue reading...Shattered and scarred: Beirut’s devastation then and now – in pictures
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.
Continue reading...A year on from Beirut explosion, scars and questions remain
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.
Continue reading...A year after Beirut blast, Lebanon sinks deep into mire of corruption
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.
Continue reading...Billionaire tycoon named as Lebanese PM as economic crisis bites
Protesters wanted someone from outside the elite, but parliament went for Najib Miqati, who has led the country twice before
After a year-long standoff, Lebanon has named a new prime minister who its feuding factions hope can ward off a total economic collapse and save an estimated 2 million people from the brink of poverty.
Protesters had demanded the selection of a figure removed from the political elite, but the Lebanese parliament instead named a billionaire tycoon, Najib Miqati, who had led the country twice before, with little success, and was accused by a state prosecutor in 2019 of embezzlement – a charge he denies and has described as politically motivated.
Continue reading...Police fire teargas at protestors outside interior minister’s home in Beirut – video
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.
Continue reading...EU prepares sanctions against Lebanon leaders a year after Beirut blast
Almost one year since Beirut blast, Lebanon is still headed by caretaker government
As the first anniversary of the deadly Beirut explosion approaches, the European Union said on Monday it hopes to develop the legal framework for sanctions targeting Lebanese leaders.
More than 11 months since Lebanon’s government resigned in response to the blast on 4 August 2020, the country is still headed by a caretaker government.
Continue reading...‘This is the end of times’: Lebanon struggles to find political path through its crisis
As the country suffers from hyperinflation and shortages of fuel and medical supplies, pressure is growing at home and abroad to address its governance quagmire
The lights dimmed further in Lebanon last month when two giant barges that had boosted its electricity grid were switched off. The result was six hours less power a day for most homes, or more need for generator fuel for those who could afford it.
However, fuel is also in short supply in the crisis-hit nation. Giant queues clog roads near filling stations and top-ups are limited to 20 litres, making most journeys precarious.
Continue reading...‘We thought we would return’: 10 years on, Syrian refugees dream of home – photo essay
A decade after civil war broke out, women who fled to Lebanon are still struggling to build a life amid the country’s unfolding economic crisis
Millions of Syrians have fled fighting over the past 10 years. The vast majority of refugees – more than 3.5 million – are living in Turkey, but more than 850,000 are living in informal settlements in Lebanon.
Continue reading...Biden expresses support for Israel-Gaza ceasefire as pressure on US rises
Israel carries out fresh wave of pre-dawn airstrikes US president stops short of demanding halt to hostilities
Joe Biden has issued a statement for the first time expressing support for a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza’s militant rulers, Hamas, after a phone conversation with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
However, the US president stopped short of calling for an immediate halt to the eight days of Israeli airstrikes and Hamas rocket barrages that have killed more than 200 people, the vast majority of them Palestinian.
Continue reading...‘I blamed myself’: how stigma stops Arab women reporting online abuse
Women in the Middle East and north Africa say social codes leave them unable to talk about social media abuse as pandemic pushes sexual harassment off the streets
The first pornographic picture sent shivers of shock through Amal as she stared in horror at the phone screen. Until now, she had responded politely to the older man who had been messaging her on Facebook, hoping to deter his questions about her life with curt, one-word replies.
More lurid pictures followed, some from pornographic magazines, others of the man himself in sexual poses. “I started to blame myself and feel that I invited this because I had replied to him,” says the 21-year-old, who is a university student in Amman, Jordan.
Continue reading...‘My son could die’: the disabled Syrian refugees on the sharp end of UK aid cuts – photo essay
Two centres in Lebanon are among the casualties of cuts to British aid, with devastating consequences for thousands of patients and families
In January, the British government told its diplomats to start finding 50–70% cuts in aid funding. In March, it was revealed it was slashing aid funding to Syrian refugee projects by a third. Among the many casualties of those cuts is a project in Lebanon.
Two centres – in Zahlé and in Beirut – offer specialised services, such as speech and physiotherapy, for disabled Syrian refugees who can’t afford to pay for them.
Continue reading...‘Kill the bill’ and trans visibility: human rights this fortnight in pictures
A round-up of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to China
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