Are broadcasting live direct from our studios in moscow this is our Team International im sean thomas certainly glad to have you with us lets get right to our breaking news this hour all right a devastating explosion ripped through the lebanese capital on tuesday government Officials Say at least 78 people are dead and more than 4000 injured the blast went off in the citys port area destroying nearby buildings and causing chaos across beirut. Wall. Was. Going to let. Her out. But. We heard from a reporter in beirut she gave us a sense of the severity of the explosion. The devastation here in the lebanese capital is very modest if it is being estimated by tens of millions of dollars as we said earlier the blast was felt 10 kilometers away from the port where it took place i believe this is going to be a sleepless night for the lebanese and a very sad night on social media a lot of lebanese are faring through the incident unfortunately there are for and through it. Scores theres no comparison between a nuclear bomb and whats happened today but its only shows how deeply impacted and how saddened they are and how devastating this explosion has been on the up and on and on the lebanese who are already grappling with very bad Economic Situation covert 19 proreform demonstrations or demonstrations asking felt lemonade corruption from the power sharing system for failing in the country the list goes on so this just adds further hurt and injury and tragedy to the lebanese people. Countries around the world have offered assistance to lebanon including its neighbors turkey and israel the World Health Organization has also said medication and surgical kits with further details heres arties bolus lier. Well its not our was off to the blast happened and still there are ambulances on the scene they are fearing wounded people to hospitals a lot of the hospitals themselves are reporting that they can no longer handle the volume of people who have been told to then it is lifea that those figures will climb some of the people are still trapped in the rubble Emergency Services struggling to reach them that last has flattened much of the citys port area i witness reports seen a huge looting a mushroom over the city as well as fires that broke out everywhere an Army Helicopters are also still on the scene helping to put out those fires now the lebanese president has taken to twitter and he has said that the blast was caused by 2700. 00 tons of Ammonium Nitrate that he said was stored in a beirut port warehouse for 6 years without Safety Measures he said and im quoting that this is unacceptable and that those responsible will receive the harshest punishment now there is an emergency Cabinet Meeting thats due to be held in a few hour winds in beirut a decision is likely to be made that there will be a 2 week state of emergency today has also been declared a national day of mourning for the victims of the explosion we understand that a uni full United Nations interim force in lebanon ship was destroyed and unifil also reporting that any number of its peacekeepers were injured in this explosion at the same time we hear that the ref Eco International airport has been damaged and the beirut governess saying and im quoting again here that the city is a disaster that theres an enormous scale of damage as i say there is chaos at the hospitals that turning people away we heard earlier from an eyewitness. I saw something and i put your anymore i looked at that strive for a lot to make sure that he was having the same experience excuse me the same thing as muse to what. Theres usually something. You need to stop the car if you look back at me and then suddenly we heard a very loud explosion then the glass shattered all over the car the cars around us the buildings and the glass just went down it was raining was all over the city of beirut now the Lebanese Interior Ministry has said that they needs to be. Waiting for the official results of the investigation that has been a wanted and has urged people to stop speculating meanwhile the lebanese Prime Minister has said that a probe will be undertaken and that those responsible will pay the price he says that there will be accountability. I will not rest until we find the person responsible for what happened so we can hold them to account and impose the most severe punishment its unacceptable theres a shipment of 2750 tons of Ammonium Nitrate has been present for 6 years in a warehouse without any preventative measures. Now a host of countries have come forward to assist lebanon amongst them ah canada the United States jordan the United Kingdom to see cyprus iran and france israel is another country thats come forward or 2 countries are to take the case that it will is offering humanitarian and medical assistance through into media we know that the israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu has instructed his National Security chief to discuss possible. With the United Nations coordinator for the process of the. Israeli president has also offered his condolences both israel and his i have denied any kind of response ability for what has happened. From all of this im joined now live by radio host and political analyst David Perkins dave as always a pleasure to get your take on these sorts of things. Lebanons president michel aoun has said it was unacceptable that the 2750 tons of Ammonium Nitrate was stored at the port for 6 years so why did this happen then i mean worth the risk obvious you dont really want that amount of chemical in such a public place im not sure the risks were obvious because monium nitrate on its own is not explosives its a component of explosives but it requires another component all explain that in a 2nd 1st i want to say as a former resident of beirut i lived there in 106869 before the civil war began and it was such a wonderful time and i have nothing a good memories and im so sorry for those people are just want to communicate that to anyone who is paying attention from that part of the country my heart is going out to those people theres a town here just south of me in houston called texas city and in 1947 at the docks there was a. Girl next to dock next to a transport full of a man. Nitrate and the 2 of them sat next to each other and unhappily started a fire somewhere and the vapor went from the one ship to the other the vapor ignited explosively and then the 2 materials started mixing on a split 2nd later an explosion like this but much bigger went off and it is remembered as the biggest explosion on planet earth was not a Nuclear Explosion destroyed the town of texas city 10000. 00 pound anchor several miles through the air and that anchor where it landed is now a monument to the memory of the people who lost their lives that day and the reason they lost their lives is because its Risky Business to put Ammonium Nitrate too close to fuel or oil or Petroleum Products and watching that earlier fire before the big went off it looks to me like the earlier fire was cooking off a number of small explosions which could have been munitions it could have been just about anything and that the fire got big enough that somewhere some reservoir of petroleum linked itself in vapor to this Ammonium Nitrate and the explosion got bigger and hotter and what you end up seeing as the as the explosion goes off is a burst of low density low power orange flames followed just split 2nd later by that massive supersonic pressure wave that you see in the big explosion that did all the harm to the city and that to me looks like an accidental explosion of a large amount of Ammonium Nitrate too close to other factors in those world war one era explosives Petroleum Products that mixed with the most money nitrate to form among other things artillery shells no sort of things they use in ground wars in the early 20th century its been improved they dont use it for explosives anymore but it certainly still is explosive but only if it goes off in proximity to oil. Or diesel fuel some kind of Petroleum Product is next to it in the to the man. To begin mixing somehow and judging by the explosion i saw on the air and double concussion that i saw the 1st one low power the 2nd one staggeringly dense and thunderously powerful was when the Ammonium Nitrate itself went up but it wouldnt have ever gone up if it didnt have another factor president thats burning petroleum bragging is a great word for it dave so right now we do know that an investigation is underway into how is there a sense that lebanons political elite theyre not going to be willing to take any responsibility to this to what extent is this a symptom of the widespread corruption and dysfunctional government that weve seen protest for years against the lebanese government well look its a 2nd slash 3rd world port city right and so its simple this is what i always say razor is at work here the simplest explanation is probably the one and that is incompetence and mismanagement and bad decisions on the part of people who are not the very best at what they do and arranging for storage of Ammonium Nitrate probably seemed like a simple thing to somebody who was sure it would not be close to any Petroleum Product and therefore would not be explosive or dangerous and so they just walked away and left it there and eventually some Petroleum Product moved within proximity and got set on fire these are people who either never learned or forgot the lesson of texas city in 1947 fortunately i say a terrible day for beirut but fortunately not as much of those materials as there was on that day in 1947 in texas city not by a long shot but it still looked an awful lot like us you case nuke going off the harbor there in beirut its a terrible day for thousands and thousands of people in my heart is breaking for them certainly very interesting to get your perspective and also im aware of the texas city story so thanks for bringing that and letting our audience know that as well dave perkins always a pleasure 30 miles from me i love to go fishing there its a great fish and spot. All right thanks for being with us here on our Day International pressure. The churchill. Warned by owen hall the way journalist based in beirut he is near the. Hospital which is close to the port. So you have a very unique perspective that is for certain beirut hospitals are they were already under severe strain some had been laying off staff in recent weeks from what youve seen how are they coping now. The situation in beirut yeah specifically with the hospitals because we do know that they were understaffed something or other from struck a strange situation on the situation and you know the hospital that i was at was in j. Town which is to some corner not hospitals completely overwhelmed you know the software looking in in a devastating to their statement in terms of the death count i had its been reported around around at 70 but i think its very much watching to rice the hospital which i wish i dealt with you know it had was from p. T. And underwhelmed the capacity to overwhelm so i asked if the staff were. Going to compare what they were doing at work and i know people being treated outside i mean i insisted they did the destination this that subjected from this explosion is is humongous and in terms of the red cross i spoke suspect some of them and they also said that the united is still trying to get get a lot of people out of the out of the rubble in the downtown sort of area where the explosion where the where the red its in point where the when explosion happened you know he did not massively into considered to have a nice air is in addition to that the state the issue of the fact that the country was told to go knock down more and more people were actually it was actually in the home at that at that point so you know i expect the death toll its royce and in terms of the hospitals and that capacity you know the ones i saw you know there were people there was people injuring outside and then there also that i did with quite a few people who would be doing this fighting died but in the hospital so in the Health Care System which has been under its new no pressure even prior because of the virus fighting or invites cases was not well equipped to deal with this d and this is just that and put another edition of an opponent there you have the experience of being able to see firsthand some of the damage could you give us a sense of the extent of the damage and how bad is it outside the immediate port area have you been able to get in and take a look. I mean i was unable to get that close on you know but i mean occurring for pools and injuries are still coming out of that i mean it was horrific the. Sort of the downtown atrophy. And that was as you progress if you got further and further towards that area on you know the decimation of the area was was absolutely terrible and undoubtedly that there are people probably still trapped within this within that when the buildings d that in terms of not my in my own experience i thought it was very close to that but just the sheer shipped out of the explosion i mean completely decimated my apartment smashed out windows were i myself been quite severely injured if ive been if ive been outside you know in terms of the what i was aiming at hospitals well they were literally telling people do not come if you have minor injuries they just simply did not have the capacity the hospitals would bring the red cross and the j. Towels to bring in green multiple most injuries and then at some point it kind of it stopped and i think that put the most sense for taking them taking them outside beirut because the Beirut Health system was already under a lot of strain even prior with the current a virus and the ongoing economic problems that country faces and this is just put an i. V. Burden on stream leak stream these dedicated but overworked and and underresourced Health Care System and health care its we appreciate you talking to us under such conditions. Of course you are actually a victim of this as well you mention that your apartment was devastated 5 where were you where is your apartment in relation to the port and how have other people that youve come in contact with reacted. Well it is apartment i mean im actually quite quite far away to be honest its not its not within us within that its kind of the rector at the since if its in sort of a manner of higher. Area but i mean in terms in terms of in terms that in terms that you can eat this year level of the explosion its completely smashed loads of apartments and a lot and this is a very densely populated area so that she is shocked just its just instance this amazing i mean i saw some of my my 2 neighbors they were they were they were they were d they were d this at least shocked you know i want to know one another one of my neighbor just outside was was busy significantly bleeding from bleeding from inside is his he his head and you know got that he had and he then went off to the local hospital you know so its really has the sheer scale of the explosion which i dont think its really been understood it sees it just its it is rich a bit around the whole the whole of beirut i do not know some do not any of my friends who are in this sort of arrow d are many and many journalists on. My colleagues you know date that theyve all been affected so you know this year scale of this in this this shit out of the station is good news is really unprecedented. On a whole a stay safe we know that well come back to you as a situation of absalom for being with us here on our 2 international. Are you are watching our 2 international after a short break well be continuing our coverage of the catastrophe in beirut to todays explosion in the port to district has killed at least 78 people injured over 4000 others and devastated buildings across the lebanese capital stay with us for more details. Seem wrong wrong wrong just dont. Get to shape our. Answers. And in detroit because the trail. One song find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. A short time ago an american airplane around the world hiroshima. Standing up claiming any. Little. Power until you do you. Can its. Like most americans growing up after the war the bombs were a great thing they ended the war they say hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides and thats what my grandfather always said was his reason for the decision. Truman was hoping for a dual strategy one was to drop the bombs and hope to pay and would surrender the number to the americans were trying to send a message to the soviet union there was american poor planning in october 19th 45 chosen 20 targets in russia. All across the board trump is down in the polls and not just by a full interview traditionally incumbency alone is enough to win the election but this time around it is a race track and lets be clear this is little to do with joe biden. I welcome back youre watching our team from national and our continuing coverage of the devastation in lebanon beirut specifically the number of deaths is continuing to rise after a devastating explosion in the lebanese capital beirut. Government Officials Say at least 78 people have been killed and more than 4000 injured the blast went off in the citys port area destroying nearby buildings and causing damage right across the city exact cause of the explosion is still unclear but lebanons interior minister has said it happened in a warehouse storing Ammonium Nitrate a volatile c