President Emmanuel Macron will travel to Lebanon on Thursday, the first world leader to visit Beirut after the port blast that wreaked destruction across the capital, as France seeks to push reconstruction in its former colony. The blast on Tuesday, blamed on an unsecured store of ammonium nitrate at the Beirut port, devastated entire neighbourhoods, killed over 100 and left up to 300,000 without homes. “I will go to Beirut tomorrow to bring the Lebanese people a message of fraternity and solidarity from the French,” Mr. Macron wrote on Twitter. In the aftermath of that visit, Foreign Minister Nassif Hitti resigned in protest at his government’s lack of crisis management. France has sent three planes to Beirut loaded with rescuers, medical equipment and a mobile clinic.

Source: The Hindu August 05, 2020 17:48 UTC