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This is horrific. #Beirut is not catching a break. The economic meltdown, the pandemic, and now this.
The blast radius
The explosives had apparently been confiscated and stored there since 2013
This is disturbing
Plenty of wild speculation, some calling it an Israeli airstrike, others saying it was a Hizbullah missile factory. There is no evidence of either. Best to keep your imaginations in check. Peoples lives are at stake.
Between 50-70 reported dead and up to 3,000 injured. Really tragic. The dead include at least two Syrian refugees.
Emerging info on what happened:
Here is the original maritime news report about the confiscation of the Rhosus, from which the explosives came.
fleetmon.com/maritime-news/…
For the most comprehensive picture of the blast based on verified open-source information, read the @bellingcat analysis. bellingcat.com/news/mena/2020…
And a harrowing on-the-ground report by the great Martin Chulov. amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug…
“Letters show officials knew of danger posed by ammonium nitrate cargo at Beirut port six years before deadly blast.”

aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/o…
For a sense of the scale of destruction in Beirut
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Idrees Ahmad
@im_PULSE
If you enjoyed @SpikeLeeJoint's superb new @netflix film "Da 5 Bloods" based in Vietnam, then I'd recommend a book by one of the greatest living authors about the Vietnamese experience of the war. Read Bao Ninh's coruscating, heartbreaking, humane book "The Sorrow of War".
Last year I had a long conversation with Bao Ninh at his home in Hanoi. One thing he said really struck me. He said that he stopped going on book tours because for the most part he found the experience alienating. But the only people he felt some affinity with were US vets.
He feels that while the experience of war was shared, there remains a big gulf in understanding. American conversations about Vietnam have remained insular; while the Vietnamese experience remains silenced by the language barrier.
Read 9 tweets
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Idrees Ahmad
@im_PULSE
If you want to understand just how useless and compromised the UN under @antonioguterres is, they’ve just appointed Marianne Gasser as the special envoy @GeirOPedersen’s chief in Damascus.
And if you want to understand just how impartial she is, here she is on December 2, 2016, celebrating the fall of Aleppo with Assad loyalists. Yes, she’s celebrating the success of the siege & bombing that @UNCoISyria called a “war crime”.

cc: @icrc @ICRC_sy
Gets worse: here's a piece she wrote for @dwnews in which she describes Syria like a natural disaster without a perpetrator & uses the pain of the people in Madaya & Aleppo to ask for reconstruction money for the regime that starved, killed, uprooted them

dw.com/en/opinion-hau…
Read 3 tweets
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Idrees Ahmad
@im_PULSE
@SenSanders Dear @SenSanders: thank you for raising this issue and emphasising its urgency. But the regime hasn't honoured any previous ceasefire, using them only as temporising measures, and the UN has little capacity to enforce them because of Russian obstruction.
@mattduss @RoKhanna
@SenSanders @mattduss @RoKhanna The current Russian/regime campaign is in breach of an existing ceasefire agreement. What is required is enforcement & deterrence. US reluctance to get directly involved is understandable. But Turkey is already in the fight, the US can equip it against Russian airpower & missiles
@SenSanders @mattduss @RoKhanna This is an opportunity: the US could regain leverage over Turkey, wean it away from Russia, and use it as an enforcer of a ceasefire. It begins with giving it the Patriot system it needs to neutralise the Russian military advantage.
Read 6 tweets

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