'No accountability': UN rights chief calls for international probe in 2020 Beirut blast

UN human rights chiefVolker Turk on Monday (September 11) urged for an international investigation into the2020 Beirut port blast that killed 178 people. The Beirut port blast on August 4, 2020 "ripped the city to shreds" exacerbating the socio-economic crisis amid the COVID-19 pandemic. As per reports, the blast is thought to have been set off by a fire at a warehouse. It detonated ammonium nitrate, hundreds of tonnes.

There were over 178 people who lost their lives in the catastrophe. The blast left over 6,500 injured while 300,000 people became homeless. There was massive infrastructure damage that plagued the country ever since.

Turk flagged that there was zero accountability for the blast and that the devastating incident needed to be looked into. "Three years after the Beirut explosion... there has been no accountability,"Turk told the United Nations Human Rights Council. "It may therefore be time to consider an international fact-finding mission to look into human rights violations related to this tragedy," he added.

Important health infrastructure damaging the medical supplies. The human rights condition of the people of Lebanon is "more vulnerable than ever before". Over 1 million people living below the poverty line and 1.5 million refugees.

Beirut blast

Theammonium nitrate shipment was originally Mozambique-bound. It was on a Russian-leased ship. It is worth noting that the chemicals had been at the port since 2013. After that, it was unloaded in the process of an unscheduled stop. Up until now, no one has claimed responsibility for the shipment that detonated leading to the disastrous incident. The dispute is over unpaid fees and defects, as per Reuters news agency.

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According to an FBI investigation,one-fifth of the 2,754 tonnes of ammonium nitrate that was unloaded in 2013 was detonated. This has led to some reports saying that the majority of the cargo went missing. The blast was so massive that it resulted in a humongous cloud over Beirut city.

The tremors of the blast were also felt 250 km (155 miles) away in Cyprus. The cargo was not unknown, as several Lebanese officials, including then-president Michel Aoun and then-prime minister Hassan Diab was aware of it.

In a 2021 report,Human Rights Watch blamed the government saying that officials "foresaw the significant threat to life ... and tacitly accepted the risk of deaths occurring".

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