US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that the country’s generals had told him that the powerful explosions which rocked Beirut appeared to have been caused by a “bomb of some kind.”
Trump told to the media at the White House, “It looks like a terrible attack”.
“It would seem like it, based on the explosion. I met with some of our great generals and they just seemed to feel that it was”, Trump further added.
“This was not some kind of a manufacturing explosion type of event. It seems to be, according to them — they would know better than I would — but they seem to think it was an attack”, he said.
“It was a bomb of some kind, yes”, the President noted.
According to the Lebanese health ministry, at least 73 people were killed and 3,700 injured across wide parts of the country’s biggest city.
Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab said that 2,750 tonnes of the agricultural fertiliser ammonium nitrate that had been stored for years in a portside warehouse had blown up, sparking “a disaster in every sense of the word”.
Diab further said, “What happened today will not pass without accountability”.
“Those responsible for this catastrophe will pay the price”, the prime minister added.
The blasts were so massive they shook the entire city and could be heard throughout the small country, and as far away as Nicosia on the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus, 240 kilometres (150 miles) away.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who has been receiving intelligence briefings since last month, also reacted to the Beirut blast but did not describe it as an attack.
Taking to Twitter, Biden said, “Our hearts and prayers are with the people of Lebanon, and the victims of the horrific explosion in Beirut”.
“I urge both the Trump Administration and international community to immediately mobilize assistance to the thousands injured in the blast”, he further posted.
The explosions hit a country already reeling from its worst economic crisis in decades which has left nearly half of the population in poverty, as well as from the coronavirus pandemic.
(With inputs from agency)