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Beirut Explosion Rocks Lebanon's Capital City; Trump on Rising Death Toll: "It Is What it Is"; Mexico Announces Plan for School; At Least 78 Killed in Massive Explosion in Beirut; U.S. Delegation to Arrive in Taiwan in Coming Days. Aired 12-1a ET
Aired August 05, 2020 - 00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): This is CNN breaking news.
ROBYN CURNOW, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello. I'm Robyn Curnow, live from CNN world news headquarters here in Atlanta.
We begin with this breaking news out of Beirut, Lebanon, where the prime minister is pointing to a warehouse full of ammonium nitrate as the likely cause of this huge explosion.
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CURNOW (voice-over): Devastating images there out of Beirut. We know the blast killed at least 78 people and wounded more than 4,000 others. Both of those numbers are sure to rise as officials say many people are still missing. The prime minister has declared a national day of mourning in the country and is promising a thorough investigation.
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HASSAN DIAB, LEBANESE PRIME MINISTER (through translator): What happened today will not pass without accountability. Those responsible will pay the price for this catastrophe.
Facts will be announced about this dangerous warehouse, which has been present since 2014 for six years. I will not preempt the investigations. The time now is for dealing with this catastrophe.
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CURNOW: CNN's Ben Wedeman was in the CNN Beirut bureau on Tuesday evening when this explosion happened, here is his report -- Ben.
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BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It felt like an earthquake and it looked like a mushroom cloud. The explosion in Beirut Tuesday so massive it shook the ground all the way to Cyprus 150 miles away.
The level of devastation is still being assessed, with widespread destruction stretching for miles from the epicenter near Beirut's port. Firefighters and emergency workers rushed to the scene, one that the city's governor, Marwan Abboud, described as resembling Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Local hospitals were immediately inundated with hundreds of victims and the Lebanese Red Cross put out an urgent call for blood donations. The casualty count is staggering. Thousands injured and dozens dead, with a number of deaths surely to rise in the hours to come.
Initially, the state news agency attributed the cause of the blast to a fire in the fireworks warehouse, but shortly afterwards the head of Lebanese security said the explosion happened at the site of confiscated high explosive materials.
Lebanon's Prime Minister Hassan Diab later said it is unacceptable that a shipment of an estimated 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate was stored in a warehouse near the port for six years. That as the country launched an investigation into the cause expecting an initial report in the coming days.
The Lebanese president has ordered military patrols in the wake of the incident in a country already on its knees due to a failing economy and the spread of COVID-19. The Lebanese prime minister has announced that Wednesday will be a day of mourning -- Ben Wedeman, CNN, Beirut.
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CURNOW: Thanks and we will get more from Ben later in the show.
We know that hospitals in and around Beirut are inundated with the wounded. A security source tells Reuters that many victims were taken outside of the city for treatment. Ambulances were brought into the capital from the north and south of the country. Residents are said to be scouring the hospitals looking for family and friends.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): My nephew is 29 years old. From 7 in the evening, we have been all over every hospital in Beirut and now we are waiting for the names to come out and nothing has come out. We don't know if he is dead or alive, we just don't know.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): There's at least 300 wounded in the hospital now, we have 6 operating suites that are still operating right now. This keeps filling up with another group that needs attention, we've got 4 to 5 in intensive care, 3 that arrived dead, everyone of our crew, doctors and nurses, are operating, even administration. Everyone is working.
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CURNOW: I want to go straight now to Jomana Karadsheh, following this from Istanbul.
I know we have live pictures coming in to CNN and it's morning in Beirut. These images that we are seeing now, as you can see daylight, people waking up to this devastation. And those of us who have covered stories, this looks like a tsunami or even a nuclear wasteland. The devastation, the breadth of this is utterly staggering.
JOMANA KARADSHEH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In the words of our producer in Baghdad, it's like you are talking about thousands of car bombs that have detonated. The level of destruction is unimaginable.
Speaking to colleagues, friends in Beirut, almost everyone has been impacted. You had a number of different aid groups warning about the impact that this is going to have, warning about what this is going to cause because we still don't know the real scale of devastation, how many people have actually been killed because, so far, according to the government, they say that about 78 people were killed and thousands of others injured.
But there are so many others who are unaccounted for. People are looking for their loved ones and saying that there are children unaccounted for. They're talking about entire streets that have been wiped out in this devastation.
And people are going to be, once the dust settles, we will find out more about the real scale of this horrific incident, Robyn. So many are going to be asking questions. We still don't know what actually caused the explosion.
But you have the Lebanese prime minister saying that 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate had been stored in a warehouse in Beirut for years, you know. This is a substance used in fertilizer bombs, in terror attacks in the past.
Why was it stored in a facility like this in the middle of the Lebanese capital is what so many Lebanese people are asking. They're asking for accountability, the government saying they will hold accountable whoever is responsible for this.
Lebanon, at the best of times, struggles to cope with situations like this. If you look at the level of devastation, the state of the country's services, right now, in the midst of a pandemic, where we heard that government hospitals were already reaching capacity. There is a lack of basic services, including massive power cuts in recent weeks and recent days.
So they are going to be struggling to provide for the injured and those who lost their homes in this incident. And that is why the Lebanese government has been calling for help and support from the international community. We've heard from various countries saying they're sending in field
hospitals, aid and support. And the Lebanese are going to need that now.
CURNOW: They certainly are.
And for many of us who spent time in Beirut and love it, can you describe where the port is in relation to those historic streets, the embassies and how it fits into the sort of structure and architecture of the city?
KARADSHEH: The port is obviously not far from the heart of Beirut, the seafront there, you have a lot of hotels in that area. You are very close to the seat of the government there, the parliament.
It's a very residential area surrounding it, Robyn. But I think the scale of the devastation reached so many areas far across the city, kilometers and kilometers away from the port where this originated.
The scale of devastation we have seen, people describing that they had heard it in Cyprus, that the shock waves from the blast were felt in Cyprus, this registered as a quake in Jordan, as far as Jordan. So this is a massive incident.
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KARADSHEH: We still don't know, Robyn, the level and the scale of the devastation but we will have to wait and see during daylight hours.
CURNOW: We certainly will. Jomana Karadsheh in Istanbul. Thanks for that update.
We know that U.S. Defense officials are contradicting an assertion by the U.S. president Donald Trump that the Beirut explosion was a bombing. The unnamed sources say that there is no indication of that. But this is what the president had to say.
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QUESTION: You called this an attack.
Are you confident that this was an attack and not an accident?
TRUMP: Well, it would seem like it, based on the explosion. I met with some of our great generals and they just seemed to feel that it was. This was not a -- some kind of a manufacturing explosion type of event. This was a -- seems to be, according to them, they would know better than I would -- but they seemed to think it was a attack. It was a bomb of some kind.
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CURNOW: Lebanese officials have not called the explosion an attack. President Trump did offer U.S. assistance and his deepest sympathies to the Lebanese people. The focus is turning to what caused that blast. Anthony May is a
retired explosives investigator for the U.S. government. He joins us now from Phoenix, Arizona.
Hi, sir. I really do want to get your expertise on this. We are hearing from the Lebanese government that this was ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer.
What do you see in these videos that we've been seeing and playing out?
ANTHONY MAY, EXPLOSIVES EXPERT: It's quite interesting to view those videos from different angles because you can kind of pick up different things from it.
One of the videos actually shows, where you've got this big dense white cloud in the lower corner, you can actually see a fire burning. And in that video there are also small white flashes that are typical of a -- I'll call it a pyrotechnic type of explosion occurring.
Before the large blast occurs, it's clear -- and I've done a lot of accident investigations with the government, both national and international -- and it is clear to me that this was a large amount of explosives or energetic material stored in a building that caught fire. And that fire propagated to the explosives, causing the accident.
CURNOW: So there was the fire and then the secondary explosion.
What do you make of this pink-red smoke that we are seeing, particularly in the secondary explosion?
What does that tell you?
MAY: That's interesting because when I was in Baghdad, Iraq -- ammonium nitrate was one of the items they were using for improvised explosive devices. However, the telltale sign from that was typically a yellow smoke cloud.
This bright or dark reddish-colored cloud is not consistent with ammonium nitrate, either burning nor exploding. Now I'm not saying that ammonium nitrate was not involved in this; it may have been. But it appears that there were other items in there as well.
CURNOW: If that's your expert opinion, when you look at that cloud and particularly the color of it, what do you think it could be, if not ammonium nitrate?
MAY: Well, I'm not saying it was not ammonium nitrate, that may have been --
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CURNOW: Well, what would color it?
MAY: Ammonium nitrate would've been a yellow cloud. What I am suggesting is that there were multiple energetic materials in that warehouse. That's evident by the fact that, when you look at the flames and from the videos, they are very intense flame.
Explosives unconfined will burn like that. It's when they become confined during a fire that you will propagate to an explosion.
Also in that video, you will see those white flashes in different parts of the video. That will be indicating that there are other explosive materials in there that are exploding. We had smaller explosions during the fire that leads up to a large explosion, to the rather extremely large shock wave that was generated.
CURNOW: A shock wave, a blast radius being felt in Cyprus, just extraordinary where this was heard and felt.
Let's talk about the amount. The government says that over 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate -- and I know you say there might be something else there -- was in this warehouse. That is an extraordinary amount.
To put it into perspective, we understand that the Oklahoma City bombing, the bomber used 2 tons of ammonium nitrate and that destroyed one building. We are talking about nearly 3,000 tons.
MAY: Right.
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MAY: The amount of explosives and the shock wave that was created -- and you have to be careful here in this term -- it's typical of a -- what would be equivalent to a kiloton nuclear bomb going off as far as the explosive weight is concerned.
Of course, there was no nuclear material that we know of involved in this. But the shock wave generated, the blast wave generated, is at equivalent to a small nuclear device.
CURNOW: Goodness me. Our thoughts and prayers with everybody in Beirut at the moment. It is just hard to get your head around this.
Anthony May, thank you for your expertise. We really value it. Thank you very much, sir.
MAY: Thank you.
CURNOW: There is much more ahead on this Beirut explosion. You will hear from a French journalist, who was actually wounded in the blast but couldn't get treated for her injuries.
Then also, the coronavirus outbreak -- don't forget that -- growing in Mexico. Schools making big adjustments. That is ahead on how they plan to teach students without risking infection. Stay with CNN.
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CURNOW: As the world grapples with some 18 million confirmed coronavirus cases, a serious warning coming from the U.N. secretary general says we are facing a, quote, "generational catastrophe" because of school closures and that the pandemic has led to the largest disruption of education ever, with more than a billion students affected.
This comes amid growing worries of a second wave. Germany already in the midst of one, according to German Doctors Association.
And a top French scientist is warning of a virus surge in autumn.
Here in the U.S., the death toll is now up to nearly 157,000 people, which far outpaces that of any other country. But you wouldn't know that by listening to the president.
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TRUMP: I actually think the numbers are lower than others. I will get back to you on that. But we proportionately are lower than almost all countries. We are at the bottom of the list. And relative to cases also we are at the bottom of the list, which is a good thing, being at the bottom of the list. But I can get back to you. We have about 4 or 5 different lists on that and we are generally speaking at the very bottom of the list.
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CURNOW: In a recent interview with Axios, the U.S. president once again defended his administration's handling of this pandemic and he said the U.S. death toll "is what it is." Erica Hill picks up the story now -- Erica.
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DR. JAY VARKEY, EMORY UNIVERSITY: Our national response to this pandemic should be a national embarrassment.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's under control, as much as you can control it.
VARKEY: The data that actually comes from the White House Task Force backs up exactly what Dr. Birx said. There is uncontrolled spread in over 32 states in the country.
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ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR AND U.S. CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Six months into this pandemic, the virus is not under control, despite the president's claims, cases surging in Southern Illinois.
GOV. J.B. PRITZKER (D-IL): The data can tell you if you're winning or losing against the virus. Unfortunately, right now, the virus is winning in Jackson County.
HILL: Early gains giving way to spikes in San Francisco.
FELIX CASTILLO, BUS DRIVER: People pretty much finding complacency. They weren't scared anymore of what was going on.
HILL: And while there are some bright spots -- California's positivity rate is declining and 14 states, including Arizona and Florida, are seeing a dip in new cases over the past week -- of the 28 states in yellow, those holding steady, many are plateauing at a very high level.
DR. MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, DIRECTOR, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA CENTER FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE RESEARCH: I think these new levels are going to make what we have had already seemed like, boy, I wish we were back in the old days.
HILL: Deaths, which lag by at least two to four weeks, are rising in 27 states, Arkansas and West Virginia seeing record hospitalizations, Atlanta's Georgia World Congress Center now a surge hospital again.
MAYOR KEISHA LANCE BOTTOMS (D-GA), ATLANTA: It saddens me that we are still heading in the wrong direction so many months after we had an opportunity to get on the other side of COVID-19.
HILL: In Georgia's largest school district, 260 employees can't work because they have either tested positive or been exposed to the virus. Two new studies suggest testing and contact tracing, still lacking, are the key to reopening schools.
KELLEY FISHER, TEACHER: We don't want to endanger one student, one teacher, one support professional, one community member.
HILL: Teachers in one Phoenix district calling on the governor to issue statewide safety mandates, as Arizona's top education official warns it's unlikely any school in that state will be able to reopen safely for in-person or hybrid learning.
DR. AMY COMPTON-PHILLIPS, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: If you just look at the facts, the U.S. has about 4 percent of the world's population and about a quarter of the cases, 25 percent of the cases. We definitely have a problem here in the U.S.
HILL: Mississippi's governor ordering a statewide mask mandate for the next two weeks. He says this will help get kids to school. That mandate, by the way, will apply to schools, to both teachers and students.
However, the governor also delaying in-person learning in some of the state's hotspots for those in grades 7 through 12 -- I'm Erica Hill in New York, CNN.
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CURNOW: Dr. Sanjaya Senanayake is an infectious diseases specialist and associate professor at the Australian National University Medical School and is joining us from Canberra.
I want you to give us a sense of what your reaction is to this U.N. warning, that we are facing a generational catastrophe in education.
As an infectious disease doctor, how can you balance the need for over a billion kids to get back to school but safely?
DR. SANJAYA SENANAYAKE, AUSTRALIA NATIONAL UNIVERSITY: It is very tricky. The only good thing about this whole situation is that children, particularly younger children, don't seem to effectively transmit this infection, compared to a whole lot of other respiratory infections.
And children overall, don't seem to get very sick with this. But yes, that is an issue. The longer that children are not at school, it will have psychological, educational and social impacts on them.
And trying to return to school in areas which have achieved elimination of COVID-19, there are some parts of Australia where that has happened, it's much easier than doing it in an environment where there is lots of community transmission.
CURNOW: In a place like Atlanta, where we are right now, do you feel that teachers and school districts and even parents are perhaps being too conservative?
Do you feel they need to take a risk here and send their kids to school, if school mandates masks, for example and that sort of thing?
SENANAYAKE: That is a very hard question to answer. On the one hand, if you reinstitute schools, the problem in a big city like Atlanta is that means that there is an enormous amount of movement twice a day, going to school, coming back from school, tens of thousands of people traveling across the city and potentially spreading infection.
Within the classroom, you can mitigate that risk, particularly if you have the older kids wearing masks, desks at least 1.5 meters apart and good ventilation. All those things can be achieved.
But then there is a risk in terms of spreading the infection by doing this. And it may involve people becoming positive, students becoming positive or teachers. And the schools get shut down immediately.
CURNOW: Certainly huge worries to prepare for parents and kids around the world.
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CURNOW: Within the midst of all of this, you are there in Australia. Australia has dealt with this in different ways as well.
What is your reaction to the military being called in?
Do you believe this needs to be dealt with in a heavy-handed away in countries around the world?
Is that the only solution for a final kind of definitive end to this?
SENANAYAKE: Well, I think that you need all the assistance that you need. The military being asked to help in Victoria I think has been a positive. And just because they're military doesn't mean it's necessarily a heavy handed approach, particularly in a fairly liberal democracy like ours.
So I think if the Victorian government feels they need that assistance to assist with isolating cases, with contact tracing and various other resources and processes, then I think that's a very reasonable thing to do.
CURNOW: Doctor, good to speak to you. Thank, you live from Canberra.
The outbreak in Latin America and the Caribbean is considered one of the worst in the world as well. On Tuesday, the region reached its most sobering milestone yet, more than 5 million cases now confirmed. Mexico alone is reporting nearly 50,000 deaths so far. The infection rate is still expected to rise by the time the new school year begins. Matt Rivers has this report.
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MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This epidemic throughout Latin America and the Caribbean just is not getting substantively better, as we now know that the region combined, 33 countries within it, are reporting a collective more than 5 million confirmed cases of this virus.
Of, course the majority of those coming from the country of Brazil, which is getting closer and closer to reporting 3 million cases just on its own.
Consider how we got to this point. It was back on July 7th that the region reported its 3 millionth case.
It was 15 days later that the region reported its 4 millionth case and now 13 days later on August 4th, the region reported it's 5 millionth case of this virus. It's not just what the coronavirus is doing on its own. It is also the collateral damage that this pandemic is having on other services.
For example, the World Health Organization is concerned about that.
The Pan American Health Organization director said, at a briefing on Tuesday, quote, "More than a quarter of countries have suspended routine vaccination campaigns and weeks or months of disruption will increase the risk of outbreaks and vaccine-preventable disease, reversing our long-standing trends in the region."
And then consider school children. Tens of millions of school children across the region are having education disrupted. Here in Mexico, the government just announced that the more than 30 million students in this country will not be going back inside the classroom anytime soon.
Instead, they will begin remote learning, starting on August 24th. The reasoning is simple. The government says the pandemic in this country is still just too bad for it to be safe for school children to begin in-person learning again. Remember, Mexico is a relatively poor country. So for children who
don't have good Internet connection at home, the government is actually partnering with several different television stations that will begin broadcasting classes, educational content, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
That way kids can still learn at home, even if they don't have a great Internet connection -- Matt Rivers, CNN, Mexico City.
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CURNOW: Thanks, Matt, for that.
Stay with us for more on our top story, that deadly blast in Beirut. We will have a report from our Ben Wedeman on the ground in the city. This is CNN.
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ROBYN CURNOW, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hi, you're watching CNN. I'm Robyn Curnow. So we return now to this massive explosion in Beirut that has killed at least 78 people. We know that thousands of people have been injured, as well. The health minister is calling it a catastrophe.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is that a bomb? Oh, my God. Oh, my God! Oh, my God.
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CURNOW: Well, the damage has spread across Lebanon's capital. Shattered glass is everywhere, mixed with debris blow into the streets, as you can see from these images.
People are being warned to stay inside because of reports also of toxic gases coming from the blast.
Well, Ben Wedeman is in Beirut and he reports now -- Ben.
BEN WEDEMAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: No one knows yet how many people died in Tuesday's blast in Beirut. The destruction was so extensive, the shockwave felt across the city. The emergency services so overwhelmed it was up to whoever could help to provide a bit of comfort to the injured. Open lots turned into field hospitals.
The blast happened just after 6 in the evening, with what started as a fire in a port warehouse, culminating with an explosion the likes of which war-scarred Lebanon has never seen.
"The whole house collapsed upon us," this woman says.
In an instant, lives were lost and livelihoods destroyed. Nichel Hibay (ph) has come to see the wreckage of what was the electrical goods store.
"Forty years," says Nichel (ph). "War. We've seen woes of every kind but not like this. As if the economic crisis, coronavirus, the revolution weren't enough, this tops them all."
Life was already a struggle in Lebanon with its economy in freefall and coronavirus on the rise, and now this.
(on camera): We got here an hour ago and as you can see, it's completely and utterly destroyed. We've been open since October, and we've been, you know, fighting every month with different circumstances, the economic situation that it's a catastrophe. What's happening in Lebanon is catastrophic right now.
WEDEMAN: In the words of the Lebanese-American poet, Gibran Khalil Gibran, "Pity the nation."
Ben Wedeman, CNN, Beirut.
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CURNOW: Ben's words are always so powerful. You can read more of his postal account of the blast and its aftermath and how he raced to report it and how he also had a pretty close shave at the CNN bureau there. It's at CNN.com.
So Tuesday's explosion also caused considerable damage to the prime minister's headquarters. I want to show you these photographs to show you what it looked like.
This is inside the government palace after the blast. Wooden furniture, we know, was destroyed.
Several doors were blown open, and the building is about one mile, or one and a half kilometers from the site of the explosion.
Well, Leila Molana-Allen is a correspondent for France 24 who was in Beirut when the blast happened, and she joins me now via Skype.
Leila, hi. I understand you are also injured? Just talk us through what happened.
LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN, MIDDLE EAST CORRESPONDENT, FRANCE 24: So my flat is about a kilometer away from the port. And just after 6 o'clock yesterday, we had heard that there was this small fireworks explosion, something happening there.
They're starting to look into that, and we then heard this incredibly loud noise that sounded like some kind of aircraft or jet breaking the sound barrier, and we do get jets both from the Lebanese armed forces and Israeli jets in Beirut. But it seemed like it was flying incredibly low over the buildings, so I jumped up to try and see if I could see that. And at that moment, there was a blinding white flash, a huge noise, and all the doors and windows were ripped off their hinges, glass flying across the flat.
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I threw myself into a corner. And when I stood up, the entire apartment was covered in debris and glass. Stumbled outside and found other people from the neighborhood doing exactly the same thing. People were dazed, bloodied, multiple injuries from glass.
I was injured myself. I had my foot cut open, but quite a minor injury. I was very lucky, but many more serious injuries than that in the entire area around me, all the residential area, was completely destroyed.
CURNOW: It sounds terrifying, and you paint a very powerful picture for us. I know that with your foot cut, you try to go -- or injured, you try to go to the hospital. Just tell us what that was like and what hospitals and doctors were trying to deal with.
MOLANA-ALLEN: I did. So I held off for quite a long time, because the hospitals really were desperate around here. Hundreds and hundreds of people turning up at hospital, the local hospital around the corner. They said by 9 o'clock, they'd had 500 people, and simply couldn't take any more. Please don't come.
And of course, there were so many people with many more serious injuries than what I had, but those of us who didn't have those injuries simply got hold of first aid equipment and tried to keep ourselves going until a later time when the hospitals might have space.
Hospitals across Beirut completely crowned. And of course, Beirut doesn't have an ambulance service. It just has the Lebanese Red Cross, which is completely volunteer-run, and they, too, were saying desperately, please don't call us until you really do need an ambulance. They set up triage in first-aid stations in downtown Beirut on two different sides of the port.
I eventually, in the early hours of the morning, about 2 a.m., found a hospital outside Beirut that apparently wasn't too busy. Once a lot of those very urgent cases had been dealt with, and I did then go up to the hospital and got my foot stitched up.
And there were doctors and a nurse there who had been working for eight hours, continuously treating hundreds of cases. They told me they were running very low on certain -- they'd runout of something, had not many tetanus shots left, because so many debris injuries they had treated, so really, they are struggling in the hospitals in Beirut last night and today.
CURNOW: Well, you certainly seem to have had a lucky escape. You were very close, one kilometer from this blast zone, particularly because we know that windows were blown out 10 kilometers away from the blast zone. It was heard in Cyprus. So it seems like you were pretty close.
I know that we've been getting live pictures from Beirut this morning. It's early morning. People are waking up to the sheer devastation. And, you know, it's difficult sometimes to get a sense of how big this is, but these pictures somehow showing us, and as many people have tried to describe it, it's a bit like a nuclear wasteland. Just tell us what -- what it's like.
MOLANA-ALLEN: It's incredibly eerie this morning. I haven't gone to bed, and so I watched the sun rise. And from where I'm sitting right over there, I can see the port. I can see the cranes which are still standing and birds flying over very peacefully. And just below that, complete devastation.
The entire fort, just 3 percent of that seaport is left at Lebanon's only fully functioning port. And all the streets coming up, because one of the problems is that there's just a highway separating that port from a deeply residential area, a very busy area full of bars and cafes, the downtown areas that many of us are used to seeing are completely ripped apart, buildings with their facades hanging off, and parts of the road just completely ripped up, tarmac sitting on the side of the street, just devastation and debris everywhere.
CURNOW: We're hearing from the government that this was a storage, a massive storage of fertilizer. What do you know about -- about what was kept at the port, and do you think that people will believe the government's account of what -- of what potentially caused this?
MOLANA-ALLEN: Well, initially, everyone, myself included, the instinctive reaction was that this was, so many of us heard, was a jet, that this was a missile that had been launched as always concerned about all intentions here and fear since the 2006 war, that something like that could happen again.
So everybody pouring out from the streets, immediately was crying and screaming, are they going to hit again, is there going to be another one?
Then, people started to think, OK, well perhaps this wasn't a strike, an airstrike or a car bomb. And the government -- first, authorities started to say that it was a repository of fireworks, which seemed a very odd thing to come up with. And there certainly haven't been anything that looked like fireworks, the way this explosion went up in one direction, red explosion, into the sky.
And then we heard from general security that it was this repository of 2,700 tons of this stuff, which has -- which had exploded, and everybody is shocked, appalled, really can't quite believe, can't get to grips with the fact that this could have been the result of government ineptitude.
There's a hashtag going around on Twitter saying, Execute the head of the customs agency here. People are so furious, so devastated that something like this could have happened out of government incompetence, if that is the case.
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CURNOW: Thank you so much for your reporting. I hope you feel better. Leila Molana-Allen there, live in Beirut. Thank you. Good luck.
So Australia's prime minister is expressing deep regret over the regret over the death of an Australian citizen in this Beirut blast. Scott Morrison said in an interview he was getting briefings on the explosion. He called it absolutely devastating, offered condolences to many of the Australians, many Australians of Lebanese descent. Take a listen.
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SCOTT MORRISON, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: Our embassy in Beirut has been -- has been impacted significantly, and but I can report on our staff there are OK. They've got some cuts and scratches and those sorts of things, but they'll be sleeping -- people were sleeping -- will be sleeping there to ensure that the facility is not compromised. They're doing a great job there, and they'll be doing all they can. Our hearts really go out to our Lebanese-Australian committee.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CURNOW: Well, Israel's president, Reuven Rivlin, tweeted, "We share the pain of the Lebanese people and sincerely reach out to offer our aid at this difficult time."
Meanwhile, Turkey's foreign minister tweeted, "Wish Allah's mercy upon those who lost their lives in the explosion. Condolences to the brotherly and friendly people of Lebanon. Hoping there won't be any more losses. Ready to assist our Lebanese brothers and sisters in every way."
And Iran's foreign minister, Javad Zarif, tweeted, "Our thoughts and prayers are with the great and resilient people of Lebanon. As always, Iran is fully prepared to render assistance in any way necessary. Stay strong, Lebanon."
Let's go to our next guest. Bob Baer is a former CIA operative who served in Lebanon. He's also a CNN intelligence and security analyst. He joins us now from Colorado.
Bob, hi. You've spent a lot of time in Lebanon. You wrote a few books about the work you did there on the ground. When you look at this explosion and hear the government saying that this was ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer, what questions do you have right now when you see those images?
BOB BAER, CNN INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY ANALYST: Well, I looked at the images very closely, and you can see evidence at the beginning of the explosions of ammonium nitrate. It's a white powder in the air, and it's burning probably, but there was no fuel oil, so it wasn't truly an explosive.
But what I did notice, that there were a lot of munitions going off in that warehouse ahead of that. And then the larger explosion was clearly military explosive. That was not ammonium nitrate. I've set those things off too many times.
So what I think happened was there were military munitions, propellants in there, something of a high velocity. It's called brisance that set that big explosion off. But it was not a fertilizer like ammonium nitrate, I'm quite sure of that. CURNOW: Or fireworks?
BAER: No. No, it wasn't fireworks. No, it wasn't fireworks. I would suspect it was someone's weapons cache. It's hard to say who. I doubt the Lebanese army would keep weapons in the port. Whether it was missives or explosives, it's hard to tell. But you look at that orange ball, it is clearly, like I said, a military explosive.
CURNOW: Yes, and obviously, the -- the government in Beirut is saying it is -- nothing of that sort, that this is down to incompetence and corruption. This is about bad management, about people storing this fertilizer in this warehouse for six years, that they knew about it, and this is -- people will pay.
We also, though, on the other hand here in the U.S., the president calling this an attack, saying the generals think it's a bomb, and no -- there's no proof of that at all.
But it also confusing the issue. Your work in Beirut on the ground. Do you think people will believe the government's response, particularly when the U.S. president is -- is also contradicting them?
BAER: I don't -- I mean, anybody who knows explosives will know this is not just ammonium nitrate, as I said. And whether it was an attack or not, there's no evidence for that either.
CURNOW: No.
BAER: It almost looks like an accident. It looks like somebody with shipping explosives, military explosives through this facility. It probably wasn't supposed to be there, because it's in a dense area, and a lot of people down there on the port.
It was incompetence, and it maybe was corruption, but the question is, if it was military explosives, who was it going to, or why was it stored there?
And that's an answer we're not going to get, by the way. I worked Lebanon for years. No one is going to want to admit they kept military explosives at the port. It's a stupid thing to do. And you'll never see the government come out and say they know what happened.
CURNOW: Just describe for us the location of the port, and the fact that we're hearing that, you know, this bomb radius, the impact radius of this of this was felt kilometers and kilometers away. I mean, glass shattering not close to that -- to that port area.
[00:45:21]
So if you can just describe for us how Beirut is designed and -- and how this has impacted the geography. Because this morning, it's looking like a nuclear wasteland, as we said -- as one of our reporters said.
BAER: Robyn, this comes at the absolute worst time. And Lebanon is in freefall financially, COVID-19. They're running out of hard currency. The government's broke. The corruption is rampant. It's on the verge of becoming a failed state. So an accident like this is -- is going to cause untold problems.
And you also go back to just the distance of this explosion, and I've talked a lot of people who spent time in Iraq and Syria recently, and they have never seen an explosion this big. So you can imagine the damage.
And friends have been sending me pictures that were -- that should have been protected from this explosion of behind bills (ph). All their -- all their windows were knocked out, furniture knocked over, and that all their untold number of people were probably standing in their window, watching the port burn. And these explosions go off, and then the big one goes off, cut very badly with glass. The hospitals are overwhelmed. This is an absolute disaster for the Lebanese. And it's -- you know, I don't know how they're going to get out of this.
CURNOW: Yes, and I think that's the point. It's just the sheer scale of this, that it's really hard to comprehend right now that radius of disaster, and also, as you say, many shrapnel wounds, kilometers and kilometers away from that initial blast center.
Bob Baer from the CIA operative and intelligence analyst for us here at CNN, always good to get your perspective. Thank you very much.
So you're watching CNN NEWSROOM. Still ahead, health experts say re- infections of the coronavirus are highly unlikely, so why are some people testing positive more than once? We'll take a look after the break.
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CURNOW: Welcome back. I'm Robyn Curnow. You're watching CNN.
Now, a key member of the Trump administration is leading a delegation to Taiwan to learn from its success in battling coronavirus. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar will arrive in the coming days.
Now, read between the lines here, and this visit could be seen as a rare admission that there's room for improvement in the Trump ministration's response to the pandemic. Despite its proximity to China, Taiwan has less than 500 confirmed cases.
Well, Paula Hancocks joins us from Taipei for more on all of that.
Paula, just talk us through the meaning of this -- this visit.
PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Roby, it's really twofold. I mean, clearly, Taiwan has done a very impressive job in trying to keep the numbers of coronavirus cases down as 476 cases out of a population of 23 million, and only seven deaths have occurred in this country, which is quite remarkable when you consider what's happening elsewhere in the world.
But that's not the only reason that the -- the health secretary will be coming here to Taipei. There is a second message, and that message is for Beijing. Clearly, this is not only a health-related trip, but it is a political trip, as well. It is a trip that is likely to anger Beijing.
Now, according to the -- the HHS, the health department in the United States. This is the highest-level individual and delegation that has come to Taiwan since 1979.
So for decades, this is the highest-level official that China sees Taiwan as a renegade province, as part of its territory, and Taiwan is a self-ruled democracy.
So this is also being seen as part of the bigger picture of the -- the battle, at this point, between the United States and China. This does send a very clear message to Beijing.
The relationship between the U.S. and Taiwan has been increasing and increasingly close under U.S. President Donald Trump. There have been many deals signed, military deals, as well, which have infuriated Beijing. And the fact that this meeting will be happening and that this official will be meeting the president here, as well, will likely have a strong reaction from China.
CURNOW: OK. Good to have you there on the ground. Paula Hancocks. Thanks so much.
So coming up, a day of mourning in Beirut after Tuesday's deadly blast. We'll have the latest on this top story for you in just a few moments. Stay with CNN as we continue to monitor this.
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CURNOW: I do want to recap our top story for you. Lebanon is observing a national day of mourning after this very powerful explosion ripped through the capital, Beirut, on Tuesday.
Dozens of people were killed. Thousands of others are hurt, and those are early numbers.
The blast went off near the port, as you can see here, sending a huge shockwave throughout the city. It flipped cars, shattered glass, damaged buildings as far as 10 kilometers away.
As of right now, we actually don't know what caused the explosion. One official blamed it on, quote, "high-explosive materials confiscated years ago" but didn't give any details.
The prime minister has announced an investigation, and he also says those responsible will pay.
We want to give you a sense not just of the damage and loss of life from the explosion, but also of the chaos and the shock on the ground as survivors try to cope.
Well, Becky Anderson spoke to an eyewitness from Beirut. This is their conversation. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BACHAR GHATTAS, EYEWITNESS (via phone): Well, first of all, we felt a sudden shake, more like an earthquake. Then after 2 or 3 seconds, a huge blast, a huge explosion. A huge explosion in Beirut port, in Harbor 12.
The damage has reached, like, a radius of 15 kilometers from the -- from the explosion. All glass windows and facades are shattered with 15 kilometers. The area close and surrounding the port is totally destroyed, totally destroyed. It's like an apocalypse in Beirut, the seaside waterfront.
BECKY ANDERSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: How are people feeling? How are people responding?
GHATTAS: The emergency services are overwhelmed, total chaos. People are being treated in the streets. The hospitals are damaged, as well, because the biggest three hospitals in Lebanon are situated in Beirut, very close to this explosion. And the hospitals are damaged. Patients in the hospitals are being evacuated, and hospitals are overwhelmed.
ANDERSON: What is --
GHATTAS: We cannot see any more the injured people. People are being treated on the streets. And it's still unknown, but some of the officials said that, of course, it's not because of fireworks. They're saying maybe it's --
ANDERSON: Well, the director of the -- of Lebanon's general security directorate, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, has just said on Lebanese TV from the explosion's side, that it would be, and I quote him here, "naive to describe such an explosion as due to fireworks" --
GHATTAS: Yes. Yes.
ANDERSON: -- adding that the incident was caused for confiscated high explosive materials. We do not want to speculate because we do not have the details as yet. Nobody does.
But what I do want you to describe is -- is the atmosphere and the sense of shock in the city today.
GHATTAS: The city is destroyed. People are like stone. They don't know how to deal with it. They're like running on the streets, trying to help each other. But every -- you can see injured people all over the streets in Beirut, left all over the place. Guards are damaged. It's like an apocalypse.
It's very, very, very frightening what is happening. And people are freaking out, and the -- the emergency services are overwhelmed. They cannot treat everything, help everybody. People are trying to help people, but the Beirut port is totally destroyed.
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CURNOW: That was eyewitness Bachar Ghattas in Beirut telling us about the impact and the aftermath of that massive explosion.
You're watching CNN. I'm Robyn Curnow. I will be back with more news, more updates and live interviews from Beirut right after this. Stay with us. You're watching CNN.
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