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The aftermath of the explosion. Hussein Malla
evening sitdown
Your evening longread: The story behind the Beirut explosion
It’s a coronavirus-free zone as we bring you an interesting longread each evening to take your mind off the news.
EVERY WEEK, WE bring you a round-up of the best longreads of the past seven days in Sitdown Sunday.
And now, every weeknight, we bring you an evening longread to enjoy which will help you to escape the news cycle.
We’ll be keeping an eye on new longreads and digging back into the archives for some classics.
In this interactive piece, the New York Times tells the full story of how tons of ammonium nitrate ended up in the same space as tons of fireworks and jugs of kerosene and acid – which all combined to create a huge bomb that devastated Beirut.
(New York Times, approx 15 mins reading time)
Previously undisclosed documents lay out how numerous government agencies passed off responsibility for defusing the situation. Exclusive photographs from inside the hangar show the haphazard, and ultimately catastrophic, handling of explosive materials. And an analysis of high-definition video illustrates how the volatile cocktail of combustible substances came together to produce the most devastating explosion in Lebanon’s history.
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