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Chloe Cornish Profile picture
Chloe Cornish
@ChloeNCornish
@FT Mumbai correspondent; previously Iraq, Syria and Lebanon from base in Beirut. Villager. "Likes" = find later. 📮 chloeDOTcornishATftDOTcom
Aug 14, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Over half the bags of explosives left in Beirut port were damaged back in 2014, docs show.

That made disposing of them urgent, say experts: leaks made the chemicals more dangerous. But no action taken.

6 yrs later the bags blew up, killing 170+ people.

ft.com/content/7d5650… Proper storage of high grade ammonium nitrates like these is crucial, scientists said. Moisture and heat alter the chemical's properties. And cramming the bags together may have made the blast more powerful.
Jun 16, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
On a sunny day in Lebanon’s seaside city of Tyre, a man leaves a gas station, dejected. Just months ago he would have pulled up in a BMW. Now, aged 50, he had been asking for work filling tanks. 8 months since he lost his job, Hussein is desperate.

ft.com/content/ecf042… Lebanon’s economy crashed last year (“free fall” is how *the government* describes it) and is predicted to shrink 12% this year.

It’s local currency spiralled downwards & businesses shuttered.

Like so many Lebanese, Hussein never imagined his life could come apart so fast.
Mar 14, 2019 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
You open WhatsApp. There's a video of your daughter - you last saw her 5 yrs ago, when she was kidnapped by Isis. Now she's 10, wearing an abaya & speaking Arabic. The Saudi Isis fighter who originally held her is dead.

So who is shooting this video?

ft.com/content/cabb2f… 3 months ago this happened to one man. Let's call him Elias. Elias is from Iraq's minority Yazidi community, among scores of parents desperately trying to find children and female relatives captured by Isis in 2014. Now the "caliphate" has fallen. So where is Elias' little girl?
Jan 25, 2019 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
The basement bakery was almost completely dark, lit by some LED lights. Men dipped dough balls into boiling syrup, sugaring the air as they made Syrian sweets called awamay👇 You might miss the slim figure in the shadows. But she's at the heart of one of Syria's biggest stories We're in a town near Damascus, which was held by rebels before being retaken by pro-regime forces in a massive military campaign last year. It's a good example of how nearly eight years of fighting has shredded the fabric of Syrian society
ft.com/content/14b870…