[deanhills]

I am sure that the Lebanon's political status can be listed as a cause. Some newspaper said that the explosion was cause by a bad management of the stock of nitrate. Ammonium nitrate is well know for its explosive problem, they magazine's owner didn't just care about WHAT he was stocking and HOW handle it.

Confiscated or legit stocks... the government doesn't havy resposability because it assigned the job to stock it to a "professional", but this one didn't take the right safety precautions

@LightDestory if you check some of the explanations above, particularly the earlier posts in this discussion by @ikk157, ammonium nitrate can't explode on its own.  It won't even explode if you just added a match to it.  It exploded because of alleged confiscated high explosive material (some thought it was fire crackers - but it just sounded that way) that had also been confiscated during a customs decision, and were stockpiled close to the ammonium nitrate.  It was the persistent and very high heat of the explosive material that exploded and caught fire that finally was responsible for the huge explosion of the ammonium nitrate.

Major General Abbas Ibrahim, of Lebanon's General Security Directorate, said the massive blast that shook Beirut's port area on Tuesday was caused by confiscated “high explosive materials.”

It would be "naive to describe such an explosion as due to fireworks," Ibrahim told Lebanese TV.

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-...e3263c09ac

And yes, I agree it was the bad administration of customs through the Government that indirectly was responsible for the explosion, as customs reportedly wrote countless warning memos over seven years (the period the ammonium nitrate was stored) to the Government about the danger of the ammonium nitrate stockpile that could basically cause Beirut to be raised to the ground.  The last Memo was received by the Lebanese Prime Minister in July.  He failed to act on it.  This was his reason for resigning.  So yes a very corrupt Government - in fact successive Governments - so much so the corruption and lack of service to the community have become institutionalized.  It's going to take a major miracle to put together a new Government that doesn't have elements of those officials used to using the Government for themselves present.

Any way, there is of course an investigation ongoing as to the cause of the explosion.  The above is what armaments specialists all over the world theorized.  I.e. not fire crackers but stockpiled explosive material (possibly ammunition) that caught fire and caused the ammonium nitrate to explode.  Currently officials of the Lebanese emergency interim Cabinet with representatives of the French Defence Department and the FBI and possibly also Canadian Defence Dept (their participation is still under negotiation) are involved in the investigation.  This is done as some people believe that the explosion was deliberately set with input from Iran. I doubt that is how it happened and so do the majority of the public.  The public blames the Government as the major cause for the explosion.