‘Thousands of children going hungry’ a year after Beirut blast

Port explosion in Lebanon last year compounded an ongoing economic crisis made worse by the COVID pandemic.

Hundreds of thousands of children continue to suffer from hunger in Lebanon after last year’s devastating Beirut Port blast and the ongoing economic crisis in the country, a report said. Since the August 4 explosion, the result of hundreds of tonnes of poorly stored and highly explosive ammonium nitrate igniting, the gap in finances families need for basic survival has increased for almost all wealth groups, Save the Children found in a new analysis. The poorest families fell about 5.5 million Lebanese pounds ($3,652) short of the 6.1 million pounds ($4,050) needed monthly to afford basic goods, the report added.