Lebanese officials unloaded a 'floating bomb' and apparently ignored warnings for years, according to reports

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• An expert said back in 2014 that Lebanese authorities had a "floating bomb" on their hands, The Daily Beast reported Wednesday.
• "There are a lot of restrictions, regulations and rules to stick to when talking about storing explosives like ammonium," Voytenko told The Daily Beast, "but they just stored it in a warehouse and forgot about it."
• Customs officials wrote several letters to Lebanese judges asking for a solution to the dangers cargo but apparently received no response, Al Jazeera reported.
• The Lebanese government has now placed several officials at the Beirut port under house arrest, according to the BBC.
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Lebanese officials and maritime experts knew that a ticking time bomb had been unloaded at the port in Beirut, but authorities appeared to disregard years of warnings — culminating in an explosion that killed at least 135 people — according to reports.

As The Daily Beast reported Wednesday, the Russian ship that was stranded at the port, abandoned by its owner while carrying some 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate, was termed by analyst Mikhail Voytenko a "floating bomb" all the way back in 2014.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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See Also:

• Aerial footage shows the full scale of Beirut's devastating explosion, which killed 100 and reduced buildings into rubble
• Lebanon's devastating blast came in the middle of an unprecedented economic crisis, frequent power outages, and hospitals struggling to contain the coronavirus
• Hospitals in Beirut were so badly damaged by the explosion that many can't admit new patients

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