Hundreds gathered in Beirut to mark five years since the deadly port explosion that killed over 218 people, renewing calls for justice and accountability. Protesters urged Lebanon’s leaders to act, hoping the stalled judicial investigation will soon be completed.
Published On 4 Aug 20254 Aug 2025
When 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate exploded in Beirut’s port on August 4, 2020, it ripped through the city, killing more than 218 people. Among them was three-year-old Alexandra Naggear.
Five years later, the investigation into who is at fault for the blast has been delayed, and at times derailed, by political interference.
“The most important thing for us is not for the decision, but for full justice to happen,” Tracy Naggear, Alexandra’s mother and a key activist advocating for the blast’s victims, told Al Jazeera by phone. “And we won’t accept a half-truth or half-justice.”
As the fifth anniversary of the tragedy approaches, there is some optimism that the judicial investigation is finally moving in the right direction after facing obstacles, mostly from well-connected politicians refusing to answer questions and the former public prosecutor blocking the investigation.
A decision from the lead prosecutor is expected soon, activists and legal sources familiar with the matter told Al Jazeera. And while the road to justice is still long, for the first time, there is a feeling that momentum is building.
“You can feel a positive atmosphere [this time],” lawyer Tania Daou-Alam told Al Jazeera.
Daou-Alam now lives in the United States, but is in Lebanon for the annual commemoration of the blast, which includes protests and a memorial.
Her husband of 20 years, Jean-Frederic Alam, was killed by the blast, which was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in modern history.
Daou-Alam is also one of nine victims suing the US-based company TGS in a Texas court for $250m, claiming it was involved in chartering the Rhosus, a Moldovan-flagged ship that carried the ammonium nitrate into Beirut’s port in 2013.
She told Al Jazeera that the case is more about “demanding accountability and access to documents that would shed more light on the broader chain of responsibility” than it is about compensation.
The population of Beirut is used to facing crises without government help. Numerous bombings and assassinations have occurred, with the state rarely, if ever, holding anyone accountable.
Frustration and a sense of abandonment by the state, the political system, and the individuals who benefit from it already boiled over into an uprising in October 2019, less than a year before the blast.
In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, residents cleaned up the city themselves. Politicians who came for photo opportunities were chased out by angry citizens, and mutual aid filled the gap left by the state.
The end of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war in 1990 set the tone for the impunity that has plagued the country ever since. Experts and historians say militia leaders traded their fatigues for suits, pardoned each other, awarded themselves ministries and began rerouting the country’s resources to their personal coffers.
Preliminary investigations found that the explosion was caused by ammonium nitrate stored at Beirut port in improper conditions for six years.
They also found that many top officials, including then-President Michel Aoun, had been informed of the ammonium nitrate’s presence, but chose not to act.
Judge Fadi Sawan was chosen to lead the full investigation in August 2020, but found himself sidelined after calling some notable politicians for questioning. Two ministers he charged with negligence asked that the case be transferred to another judge.
A court decision, seen by Reuters, claimed that because Sawan’s house had been damaged in the blast, he would not be impartial.
Replacing him in February 2021 was Judge Tarek Bitar. Like Sawan, Judge Bitar called major political figures in for questioning and later issued arrest warrants for them. Among them are Ali Hassan Khalil and Ghazi Zeiter, close allies of Lebanon’s Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, who still refuse to respond to Judge Bitar’s requests and claim they have parliamentary immunity.
Despite much popular support, many of Judge Bitar’s efforts were impeded, with Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces at times refusing to execute warrants and the former Court of Cassation public prosecutor, Ghassan Oueidat, ordering his investigation halted.
In early 2025, Lebanon elected a new president, Joseph Aoun, and a new prime minister, Nawaf Salam.
In their inaugural addresses, both spoke about the importance of finding justice for the victims of the port explosion.
“The current justice minister seems determined to go all the way, and he has promised that the judge will no longer face any hurdles and that the ministry will provide all help required,” Karim Emile Bitar, a Lebanese political analyst with no relation to the judge investigating the port explosion, told Al Jazeera.
Human Rights Watch reported in January 2025 that Judge Bitar had resumed his investigation, “after two years of being stymied by Lebanese authorities”.
On July 29, Salam issued a memorandum declaring August 4 a day of national mourning. On July 17, Aoun met with the families of victims killed in the explosion.
“My commitment is clear: We must uncover the whole truth and hold accountable those who caused this catastrophe,” Aoun said.
Oueidat, the former public prosecutor, was replaced by Judge Jamal Hajjar in an acting capacity in 2024, before being confirmed as his successor in April 2025.
In March 2025, Hajjar reversed Oueidat’s decisions and allowed Judge Bitar to continue his investigation.
Legal experts and activists have been pleased by the progress.
“Actual individuals implicated in the case are showing up to interrogations,” Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera. Among them are Tony Saliba, the former director-general of State Security, Abbas Ibrahim, former director-general of the General Directorate of General Security, and Hassan Diab, prime minister at the time of the explosion.
But this is still not enough for those wanting justice to be served after five years of battles, activists and experts note.
“We are asking for laws that are able to protect and support the judiciary and the appointments of vacant judge [posts], so these things will show the government is on our side this time,” Daou-Alam said.
Even with the new government pushing for accountability, some are still trying to disrupt the process.
Hassan Khalil and Zeiter still refuse to appear before Judge Bitar, and a fight has emerged over the country’s judicial independence.
“We can only get justice if the judiciary acts independently so that they can go after individuals and so the security services can act independently without political interference,” Kaiss said.
The last few years have been a turbulent period of myriad crises for Lebanon.
A banking collapse robbed many people of their savings and left the country in a historic economic crisis. Amid that and the COVID-19 pandemic came the blast, and international organisations and experts hold the Lebanese political establishment responsible.
“The time has come to send a signal to Lebanese public opinion that some of those responsible, even if they are in high positions, will be held accountable,” political analyst Bitar said.
“Accountability would be the first step for the Lebanese in Lebanon and the diaspora to regain trust,” he said, “and without trust, Lebanon will not be able to recover.”
Still, Bitar maintained, progress on the port blast dossier doesn’t mean every answer will come to the forefront.
“This crime was so huge that, like many similar crimes in other countries, sometimes it takes years and decades, and we never find out what really happened,” he said.
Blast victim Tracy Naggear noted that “[our] fight… is mainly for our daughter, for Alexandra, of course”.
“But we are [also] doing it for all the victims and for our country,” she said. ‘[It’s] for every single person that has been touched by the 4th of August, from a simple scratch to a broken window.”
Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun says his country seeks peace with Israel, but is not ready to normalise ties.
Lebanon’s president says his country wants peace but not normalisation with Israel, as health authorities said an Israeli air strike killed one person in the south of the country.
As well as causing one death on Friday, the drone attack on a car in Nabatieh district wounded five other people, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health.
It comes as Israel continues to launch regular strikes against sites in Lebanon, particularly in the south, despite a November 27 ceasefire agreement between it and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.
Under the terms of the truce, Hezbollah had to retreat to the north of the Litani River, which is about 30km (20 miles) from the Israeli border, while Israel had to fully withdraw its troops, leaving only the Lebanese army and United Nations peacekeepers in the area.
However, Israel still occupies five strategic locations in southern Lebanon.
Speaking on Friday, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun expressed a desire for peaceful relations with his country’s neighbour. But he stressed that Beirut was not currently interested in normalising ties with Israel, something mentioned as a possibility by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar last week.
“Peace is the lack of a state of war, and this is what matters to us in Lebanon at the moment. As for the issue of normalisation, it is not currently part of Lebanese foreign policy,” said Aoun, who urged Israel to withdraw completely from Lebanon.
In a reference to the US’s ongoing call for Lebanon to fully disarm Hezbollah, the Lebanese president also expressed Beirut’s desire to “hold the monopoly over weapons in the country”, but he did not give further details.
Hezbollah, which is considerably weakened after more than a year of hostilities with Israel, has dismissed questions about disarmament.
“We cannot be asked to soften our stance or lay down arms while [Israeli] aggression continues,” its leader Naim Qassem told crowds in southern Beirut on Sunday.
On Wednesday, the Israeli military confirmed that some of its troops had entered southern Lebanon, with the army saying they sought to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure and to stop the group from “reestablishing itself in the area”.
The following day, a man was killed by an Israeli drone strike on a motorbike in the village of al-Mansouri near Tyre, the Lebanese Ministry of Health said. Two others were injured in the attack, it added.
An Israeli drone attack on a car killed at least one person and injured three others near the Lebanese capital Beirut on Thursday during rush hour, according to local authorities. Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr was at the scene as officials inspected the wreckage.
Published On 3 Jul 20253 Jul 2025
Air raid hits vehicle in Khaldeh, south of Lebanese capital, as Israel continues its near-daily attacks on Lebanon.
An Israeli drone attack has killed at least one person and injured three near the Lebanese capital, Beirut, the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health says, the latest violation of the ceasefire between the two countries.
The air raid on Thursday hit a vehicle on a busy motorway in the Khaldeh area, about 12km (8 miles) south of Beirut.
The Israeli military said it targeted “military sites and weapons depots” in the area.
Bombing an area near the Lebanese capital marks another escalation by Israel, which has been carrying out near-daily bombardment in Lebanon since it reached a truce with Hezbollah in November of last year.
The identities of the victims of the attack have not been released.
Reporting from outside Beirut, Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr noted that the Israeli air raid took place during rush hour, with many people making their way from Beirut to south Lebanon.
“Israel is also acting with little restraint. The Lebanese state wants these attacks to stop, but the state has little leverage. Hezbollah, too, if it does respond, could trigger a harsh Israeli retaliation,” Khodr said.
“We don’t see a wide-scale Israeli bombardment like we saw last year, targeting areas where Hezbollah has influence, but we see these attacks happening almost on a daily basis.”
Later on Thursday, the Israeli military carried out a wave of air strikes across south Lebanon, with heavy bombardment targeting the outskirts of Zawtar al-Charqiyeh, near Nabatieh, Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported.
Lebanese officials often condemn such attacks and call on the United States and France – the two sponsors of last year’s ceasefire – to pressure Israel to end its violations.
But diplomatic efforts have failed to stem the ceasefire breaches, amid unwillingness by the US and its Western allies to hold Israel to account.
The repeated Israeli attacks are testing Hezbollah’s position in Lebanon after it suffered painful blows in its confrontation with Israel last year.
The Iran-allied group started attacking Israeli military positions at the border in October 2023, in what it said was a “support front” to help bring an end to the war on Gaza.
For months, the conflict remained largely confined to the border region, but in September of last year, Israel launched an all-out assault on Lebanon that destroyed large parts of the country, especially areas where Hezbollah enjoys support.
The Israeli military also assassinated the group’s top political and military leaders, including Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
A ceasefire was reached in November, in accordance with Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended a previous conflict in 2006.
The truce stipulated that Hezbollah must withdraw its forces to the north of the Litani River, about 30km (20 miles) from the Israeli border.
But after the truce came into effect, Israel continued to occupy parts of south Lebanon in violation of the agreement, and it has been carrying out attacks across the country.
Weakened by the war, Hezbollah has refrained from responding. The Lebanese Armed Forces have also failed to hit back against Israel.
The latest strike in Khaldeh comes amid Lebanese media reports about a US proposal that would see Hezbollah disarm in exchange for an end to Israel’s attacks and a full withdrawal from the country.
But Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Naim Qassem appeared to dismiss any agreement to give up the group’s weapons that would involve Israel.
“We are a group that cannot be driven to humiliation. We will not give up our land. We will not give up our arms to the Israeli enemy,” Qassem said. “And we will not accept to be threatened into concessions.”
Qassem previously warned that Hezbollah’s “patience” in allowing the Lebanese state to deal with the Israeli attacks diplomatically may run out.
But given the cost of the previous war on Hezbollah’s military structure as well as its civilian base, it is not clear whether the group is in a position to renew the conflict with Israel.
Israeli air attacks hit buildings in neighbourhoods across southern Beirut on Thursday.
Source link