About four years before the Beirut port explosion that killed dozens of people and injured thousands, a U.S. government contractor expressed concern to a Lebanese port official about unsafe storage there of the volatile chemicals that fueled last week’s devastating blast, American officials said Tuesday. There is no indication the contractor communicated his concerns to anyone in the U.S. government. The cable, labeled sensitive but unclassified, dealt largely with the Lebanese responses to the blast and the origins and disposition of the ammonium nitrate, which ignited to create an enormous explosion.
About four years before the Beirut port explosion that killed dozens of people and injured thousands, a U.S. government contractor expressed concern to a Lebanese port official about unsafe storage there of the volatile chemicals that fueled last week’s devastating blast, American officials said Tuesday. There is no indication the contractor communicated his concerns to anyone in the U.S. government. The cable, labeled sensitive but unclassified, dealt largely with the Lebanese responses to the blast and the origins and disposition of the ammonium nitrate, which ignited to create an enormous explosion.