US President Donald Trump on Tuesday suggested that the massive explosion that killed at least 78 people and wounded thousands in Beirut, Lebanon was an “attack” caused by a “bomb of some kind”.
“It looks like a terrible attack,” President Trump said to reporters at a White House news briefing on the Covid-19 epidemic.
When pressed for details he said he had met with “some of our great generals, and they just seem to feel that it was. This was not a — some kind of a manufacturing explosion”.
He aded: “They seem to think it was an attack. It was a bomb of some kind.”
No further details were available.
Unidentified defense department officials told CNN they had no evidence to suggest it was an attack, as the president indicated.
Lebanese authorities have not yet called the explosion as an attack. “I will not relax until we find the responsible party for what happened, hold it accountable and apply the most serious punishments against it because it isn’t acceptable that a shipment of ammonium nitrate — estimated to be 2,750 tons — was in a depot for the past six years without precautionary measures being taken,” a senior official said in a televised statement from Prime Minister Hassan Diab, according to The New York Time.
It also quoted Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, the head of Lebanon’s general security service, hours earlier that “highly explosive materials” were stored at the site.
Ammonium nitrate has been used in deadly accidents such as one in Texas in 1937 that killed over 580 people, and in bombings as in Oklahoma City in 1995 in which 168 people died.
Shortly before Trump’s remarks, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “I’d like to extend my deepest condolences to all those affected by the massive explosion at the port of Beirut today,. We are closely monitoring and stand ready to assist the people of Lebanon as they recover from this tragedy.”
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