Tripoli bakery roof collapses, no injuries reported

TRIPOLI — The roof of the Abu Rateb bakery in the Dahr al-Maghr neighborhood of Tripoli, in northern Lebanon, collapsed on Friday, without causing an injuries, but leaving the bakery's interior in disarray, L'Orient Today's correspondent in the North reported.

Two adjacent buildings in Dhar al-Maghr collapsed on Wednesday while a third building, in the same neighborhood, is currently at risk of collapse.

On Friday, housing allowances were distributed to residents affected and displaced from the three buildings by the High Relief Commission in the presence of the head of Tripoli's municipality Abdel Hamid Karimah, who affirmed that the Tripoli Municipality "continues to coordinate with the relevant official authorities to follow up on the file of the damaged buildings."

He called for it to be "included on the Cabinet’s agenda within a clear and comprehensive national plan that ensures a fundamental solution while preserving the dignity and safety of citizens."

In a separate incident, a large fire broke out near the oil tanks within the Tripoli Oil Facilities compound in the Baddawi area, which was caused by the burning of an electrical transformer, L'Orient Today's correspondent reported. Civil Defense teams rushed to the area and extinguished the fire, and no injuries were reported.

In late 2023, a member of the Tripoli city council revealed that some 700 buildings in Tripoli were at risk of collapsing, but the year prior, the president of the National Commission of Real Estate, Indira al-Zouhairi, had put the number even higher, estimating that 4,000 buildings in Tripoli alone were at risk of collapsing.

Tripoli is the poorest city in the country and suffers from dilapidated infrastructure and lack of public funding. Many buildings were constructed without meeting building safety regulations.

A child was killed when a building in the Kobbeh neighborhood collapsed in June 2022, and in 2023, there were several partial building collapses, such as ceilings, and walls, which fell on residents. Collapses peaked in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that struck southern Turkey, causing aftershocks across Lebanon in February of the same year.

Reporting contributed by our correspondent in northern Lebanon, Michel Hallak.