BEIRUT: The Beirut Bar Association on Wednesday handed the public prosecutor almost 700 criminal complaints from victims of the city’s deadly August 4 port blast, Lebanon’s National News Agency said.
The explosion of a massive stockpile of ammonium nitrate in a dockside warehouse killed more than 200 people, wounded thousands and ravaged swathes of the capital Beirut.
“We presented 679 complaints today, in the name of the families of those killed, wounded and affected,” Bar Association head Melhem Khalaf said, according to the NNA.
“We cannot stop until a verdict is pronounced,” Khalaf said, calling the blast “a horrific catastrophe.”
It was the first wave of complaints to be filed of around 1,400 cases being compiled by the Bar Association.
“We need to go deep with the ongoing investigations,” Khalaf added.
The blast was the country’s worst peacetime disaster.
It reignited popular outrage against the political class, after it emerged officials had known the ammonium nitrate had been stored unsafely at the port for years.
Lebanese officials have rejected an international probe, despite demands both from home and abroad for an impartial investigation.
A local investigation has led to the arrest of at least 25 suspects, including the chief of the port and its customs director.
Experts from France and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation took part in the preliminary investigation.
A judicial source told AFP that Lebanon had received the report from the American experts, and was expecting one from France within the next two weeks.
“Much hinges on the French report to determine the causes of the explosion,” the source said.
According to Khalaf, the FBI report relies on information from the Lebanese agencies, whereas the French one will draw on “the results of laboratory tests.”
Lebanon has complained it has yet to receive satellite images of the port before, during and after the blast that it requested from France and Italy.
Lebanon blast victims file almost 700 legal complaints
https://arab.news/wpb96
Lebanon blast victims file almost 700 legal complaints
- The explosion of a massive stockpile of ammonium nitrate in a dockside warehouse killed more than 200 people
UN finds dire conditions in Sudan’s El-Fasher during first visit since its fall
- Paramilitary force overran the city in October committing widespread atrocities
- UN team visited Saudi Hospital where RSF massacred hundreds of people
CAIRO: A UN humanitarian team visited El-Fasher in Sudan’s Darfur region for the first time since a paramilitary force overran the city in October, carrying out a rampage that is believed to have killed hundreds of people and sent most of the population fleeing.
The hours-long visit gave the UN its first glimpse into the city, which remains under control of the Rapid Support Forces. The team found hundreds of people still living there, lacking adequate access to food, medical supplies and proper shelter, the UN said Wednesday.
“It was a tense mission because we’re going into what we don’t know … into a massive crime scene,” Denise Brown, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, said of Friday’s visit.
For the past two months, El-Fasher has been nearly entirely cut off from the outside world, leaving aid groups unsure over how many people remained there and their situation. The death toll from the RSF takeover, which came after a more than a year-long siege, remains unknown.
Survivors among the more than 100,000 people who fled El-Fasher reported RSF fighters gunning down civilians in homes and in the streets, leaving the city littered with bodies. Satellite photos have since appeared to show RSF disposing of bodies in mass graves or by burning them.
Brown said “a lot of cleaning up” appeared to have taken place in the city over the past two months. The UN team visited the Saudi Hospital, where RSF fighters reportedly killed 460 patients and their companions during the takeover.
“The building is there, it’s clearly been cleaned up,” Brown said of the hospital. “But that doesn’t mean by any stretch of the imagination that this story has been wiped clean because the people who fled, fled with that story.”
El-Fasher lacks shelters and supplies
El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, had been the last stronghold of the Sudanese military in the Darfur region until the RSF seized it. The RSF and the military have been at war since 2023 in a conflict that has seen multiple atrocities and pushed Sudan into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
The UN team visiting El-Fasher focused on identifying safe routes for humanitarian workers and conducted only an initial assessment on the situation on the ground, with more teams expected to enter, Brown said.
“Villages around El-Fasher appeared to be completely abandoned. We still believe that people are being detained and that there are people who are injured who need to be medically evacuated,” said Brown, citing the initial UN findings.
The exact number of people still living in the city is hard to determine, but Brown said they’re in the hundreds and they lack supplies, social services, some medications, education and enough food.
They are living in deserted buildings and in shelters they erected using plastic sheets, blankets and other items grabbed from their destroyed homes. Those places lack visible toilets and access to clean drinking water.
The first charity kitchen to operate since the city’s fall opened Tuesday in a school-turned- shelter, according to the Nyala branch of the local aid initiative Emergency Response Rooms (ERR). The charity kitchen will be operated by ERR Nyala, serving daily meals, food baskets, and shelter supplies. More community kitchens are expected to open across 16 displacement centers, sheltering at least 100 people.
The UN team found a small open market operating while they were in the city, selling limited local produce such as tomatoes and onions. Other food items were either unavailable or expensive, with the price of one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of rice reaching as high as $100, Brown said.
‘Paralyzed’ health care system
Mohamed Elsheikh, spokesperson for the Sudan Doctors Network, told The Associated Press Wednesday that medical facilities and hospitals in El-Fasher are not operating in full capacity.
“El-Fasher has no sign of life, the health care system there is completely paralyzed. Hospitals barely have access to any medical aid or supplies,” he added.
Brown described the situation in El-Fasher as part of a “pattern of atrocities” in this war that is likely to continue in different areas.
The United States has accused the RSF of committing genocide in Darfur during the war, and rights groups said the paramilitaries committed war crimes during the siege and takeover of El-Fasher, as well as in the capture of other cities in Darfur. The military has also been accused of rights violations.
