By Karmon, Ely (Dr.) -
The major questions regarding the causes, and responsibilities, of the catastrophic explosion relate to the origin and destination of the ammonium nitrate cargo and the reasons that led to its storage in the Beirut port for six years.
This short paper analyses the available information at this moment and the discrepancies in the various reports in order to try to clarify if Hezbollah had any connection to this affair, as some in the Lebanese public believe.
Official versions
Lebanon's President, Michel Aoun, blamed the detonation on 2,750 tones of ammonium nitrate that he said had been stored unsafely at a warehouse in the port.
A similar amount of the chemical arrived on a Moldovan-flagged cargo ship, the MV Rhosus, which docked in Beirut in 2013 after suffering technical problems while sailing from Georgia to Mozambique.