Hassan is surrounded by rubble that once made up his life. The flat he had renovated himself was destroyed by the massive explosion that rocked Beirut on August 4. It can’t be rebuilt. His car is a write-off.
This is the third time in the past decade that Hassan has lost his home. First, he fled from the civil war in Syria in 2014. He was then chased out of his mother’s village in the south of Lebanon because of his Syrian origins. Finally, in 2015 he started rebuilding again, this time in Beirut. But now everything is gone.
The Beirut blast, in which a vast amount of ammonium nitrate stored at the city’s port was detonated by a fire leaving nearly 200 dead and 4,000 injured, came at a particularly difficult time for Lebanon, which is suffering its worst economic crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.
