The destroyed silos of the Port of Beirut in 2024, four years after the tragedy of Aug. 4, 2020. (Credit: Matthieu Karam/L'Orient Today.)
BEIRUT — Five years and one month after the Beirut port explosion on Aug. 4, 2020 killed over 230 people and shattered the capital, families of the victims gathered again Thursday evening at the Lebanese Emigrant statue, demanding progress in the stalled investigation.
"On Aug. 4, 2020, it was not merely an explosion, but a massacre targeting an entire city and its people, and by extension, all Lebanese. It was a deliberate and intentional crime that turned the port into a bomb, killing hundreds of innocents, injuring thousands, displacing tens of thousands of families, and leaving a scar that time will never erase," the participants wrote in a statement released on the sidelines of the gathering.
"We declare clearly: everyone who enabled the existence of these deadly materials must be held accountable — all those who knew and stayed silent, all those who conspired, from the lowest employee to the highest official," they added.
The latest development in the case: on Aug. 29, Justice Minister Adel Nassar met with the families of two former port customs officers, Joseph Nicolas Skaff and Mounir Abou Rjeily, both found dead under suspicious circumstances, respectively in March 2017 and December 2020.
