Almost £230m raised for Beirut including £20m from UK as fury boils over in Lebanon
Beirut is to receive almost £230 million in emergency aid after dozens of countries - including the UK - joined forces to offer Lebanon support following a tragic explosion which devastated the country's capital five days ago.
At a virtual meeting of world leaders on Sunday, the UK pledged £20 million on top of the £5 million it has already made available for the Lebanese relief efforts.
The conference was co-hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres, with the aim of bringing donors together to supply emergency aid and equipment to the Lebanese population.
France pledged approximately £27 million into the pot, which reached around £228,466,289.
At least 220 people have died following the explosion, with thousands more injured.
Over 30 conference participants offered emergency humanitarian aid to the country and pledged help for a “credible and independent” investigation into last week’s blast.
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Among those on the call were President Donald Trump, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and other top officials from China, the European Union and the Gulf Arab countries.
Ahead of the meeting Mr Trump said "everyone wants to help".
Germany has also announced 43 tonnes of supplies arrived in Beirut from Berlin just before midnight.
Speaking ahead of the global conference, International Development Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan said: “The devastation we have seen in Lebanon this week has left people without homes, medical care and wondering how long it will be until the country’s food supplies run out.
“Today the world is coming together to stand by the Lebanese people, and as one of the biggest donors to this crisis so far, the UK is pledging more urgent support to help all those affected by this terrible disaster.”
Correspondent Emma Murphy reports from Beirut where she says there are concerns the money pledged from across the world will not go to those in need, due to corruption.
The UK had already made £5 million available to the response, £3 million of which will go to the British Red Cross for the emergency relief effort. which has left over 250,000 people homeless.
A British team of specialist medics funded by UK aid flew to Lebanon on Friday to assess health needs on the ground and identify what more the UK can do to help.
Humanitarian experts from the UK are also on the ground and the Royal Navy survey ship HMS Enterprise will deploy to Beirut, the government said.
One British aid worker said the impact of the explosion can be seen six miles from the epicentre of the blast.
British charity Saraid (Search and Rescue Assistance in Disasters) has been working in the city for several days, trying to find survivors and evaluate the structural safety of buildings hit by the blast.
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One of Saraid's volunteers, Rob Davis, 49, described the epicentre of the explosion as "completely devastated, a huge amount of damage", but the effects can also be seen further out of the city.
"The area of affected property is massive," Mr Davis said.
He continued there are "various levels of damage" across communities in Beirut, but Saraid workers are liaising with local agencies to check buildings and rank them as safe or unsafe, to "try and get some sense of normality back to the communities of Beirut".
On Saturday, Boris Johnson told Lebanon's president Michel Aoun the UK will "stand by the country in its hour of need".
According to a No 10 spokesperson, the Prime Minister also conveyed condolences from the Queen.
Meanwhile, protesters stormed government buildings in Beirut on Saturday night to vent their anger at the authorities.
Demonstrations also played out in streets that were wrecked from Tuesday’s blast at the port that devastated much of the city and killed nearly 160 people.
They blamed the government’s inefficiency and political division for the country ills, including the recent disaster that hit almost every home.
Demonstrators clashed with security forces, who responded with heavy volleys of tear gas and rubber bullets.
One police officer was killed and at least 238 people were hurt in the clashes, and 63 of them needed to be taken to hospital, according to the Red Cross.
Lebanon's information minister Manal Abdel-Samad has since resigned.
The disaster has taken popular anger to a new level in a country already reeling from an unprecedented economic and financial crisis and near bankruptcy.
The country’s ruling class, made up mostly of former civil war-era leaders, is blamed for incompetence and mismanagement that contributed to Tuesday’s explosion.
Activists who called for the protest set up symbolic nooses at Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square to hang politicians whose corruption and negligence they blame for the explosion.
The blast was fuelled by thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate that had been improperly stored at the port for more than six years.
Watch Security Editor Rohit Kachroo's report from earlier this week on the explosion and the significance of ammonium nitrate
Apparently set off by a fire, the explosion was by far the biggest in Lebanon’s troubled history and caused an estimated £7.6 billion-£11.5 billion in damage, according to Beirut’s governor.
It also damaged 6,200 buildings and left hundreds of thousands of people homeless.
In a televised speech on Saturday evening, Prime Minister Hassan Diab said the only solution was to hold early elections, which he planned to propose in a draft bill.
He called on all political parties to put aside their disagreements and said he was prepared to stay in the post for two months to allow time for politicians to work on structural reforms.
However, the offer is unlikely to soothe the escalating fury.
The state, which is investigating the cause of the explosion, has been conspicuously absent from the ravaged streets of Beirut, with almost zero involvement in the cleanup.
Instead, teams of young volunteers with brooms have fanned out to sweep up broken glass and reopen roads.
Documents that surfaced after the blast showed that officials had been repeatedly warned for years that the presence of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate at the port posed a grave danger, but no one acted to remove it.
Officials have been blaming one another, and 19 people have been detained, including the port’s chief, the head of Lebanon’s customs department and his predecessor.
The protests came as senior officials from the Middle East and Europe visited in a show of solidarity with the tiny country that is still in shock.