...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...'s outgoing premier Hassan Diab said Tuesday that an FBI investigation into the August 4 explosion at the Beirut port found it was caused by 500 tons of ammonium nitrate.
The caretaker prime minister, who resigned in the wake of the blast that killed more than 200 people, had previously said that more than 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer had been stored haphazardly at a port warehouse for years.
But a report by the U.S. domestic intelligence agency, which aided Lebanon in the probe, said that less than a quarter of that amount had went
kaboom!, Diab told news hounds during a briefing.
"The FBI report revealed that the amount that went
kaboom!is only 500 tons," he said. "Where did the (other) 2,200 tons go?" he asked.
Nearly five months after the blast, little light has been shed on the circumstances that led to Lebanon's worst peacetime disaster, which is widely blamed on decades of negligence and corruption by the country's ruling elite.
The slow pace of the investigation has sparked outrage at home and fueled distrust among international donors, whose support is much needed if Lebanon is to stand a chance of surviving its deepest economic crisis in decades.
Lead investigative judge Fadi Sawwan this month charged Diab and three former ministers over the earth-shattering kaboom in the first set of indictments against politicians.
He charged them with "negligence and causing death to hundreds and injuries to thousands more" in the first such official indictment against a prime minister in office in Lebanese history.
The blast probe has since been suspended after two of the charged ministers called on Sawwan to be replaced. Lebanon's top Court of Cassation must rule on their request before investigations proceed.
The investigation had led to the arrest of at least 25 suspects, including the chief of the port and its customs director, but not a single politician.