Bent spine and lost gaze, Mamdouh Khodr waits at the entrance to the emergency room of Geitawi hospital in Beirut for news of his son Ouday “Entered the operating room”. Badly burned, her son was evacuated to the capital after the explosion of a gas tank in the Akkar region, located in northern Lebanon. It was night, after 1 a.m., Sunday August 15th. According to a provisional toll, 28 people were killed. More than 50 burns remained hospitalized Sunday, between Tripoli (north) and Beirut, half of them in serious condition. The victims are civilians and soldiers. Pieces of bodies found at the scene of the explosion have yet to be identified.
According to Mamdouh Khodr, “Ouday, [qui est] soldier, was with a friend, they joined the crowd “ which had rushed Saturday evening near a gas tank seized earlier by the army, and part of which had been left to be distributed to the population, in the locality of Tleil, 4 kilometers from Syria. In the chaos, men were trying to recover some of this precious liquid which had become almost impossible to find in Lebanon since the announcement on Wednesday of the lifting of fuel subsidies made by the central bank. The versions differ on the causes of the explosion: gunshots fired at the tank? Flames caused by lighting a lighter?
Economic abyss
“Our lives are worth nothing to the leaders”, says Mamdouh, with his crumpled face, which sums up in a few words the misfortunes of his region of Akkar, the poorest of Lebanon, in the economic abyss into which the country in tatters is plunged: “People are hungry. “
The tragedy of Tleil, the cries of people trapped in the flames, the images of bodies covered in bandages, are a new shock in Lebanon. “Everything is possible, when there is no longer a government that manages the country [l’exécutif est démissionnaire depuis un an], and that the economic situation is unstable. There are no more limits to problems and troubles ”, worries Dr. Pierre Yared, director of the Geitawi hospital in Beirut, which has a center for severe burns. On August 9, three people were killed in northern Lebanon following disputes over fuel supplies.
Individuals have stockpiled with the expectation of making juicy profits once the subsidies are lifted, and quantities are being smuggled into Syria
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