A year on, Beirut blast victims still struggling to return home

Amid economic crisis and political dysfunction, many of Beirut’s homes remain in ruins and their tenants in limbo.

Beirut, Lebanon – Maysar Al Suleiman and his family fled from the carnage of war in Syria to Lebanon in 2014, only to narrowly avoid death in the Beirut Port blast that devastated parts of the city one year ago. Al Suleiman, his wife Hasna, and six children lived in the semi-industrial Karantina neighbourhood, just a stone’s throw from the port where the explosion on August 4, 2020, killed more than 200 people and wounded 6,500 others. Many in Lebanon blame officials for storing hundreds of tonnes of highly explosive ammonium nitrate at the port, which ignited and caused the blast. The sheer force of the explosion blew out the doors and glass from the windows in Al Suleiman’s home and part of the ceiling collapsed.