It’s Tuesday evening formerly in Lebanon, approximately 18 clock: Together with a friend, I’m South of Beirut on the road. We want to speak with local representatives and UN volunteers on aid projects for the supply of hungry people. Suddenly, a friend calls me. “There was an Explosion in Beirut,” he says. In the next few minutes my mobile phone rings continuously. Twenty meters beside us and UN aid workers, and soldiers. We will run to you and ask what happened. You don’t know anything. Now you get calls from Beirut. You immediately jump in the car and drive. The people around us on the telephone, talking excitedly into their mobile phones. It is clear to all that something Bad must have happened. Some say that Israel has attacked.
My first thought: Help
I have not a second to think. My first impulse: I have to go down there and help. We immediately jump in the car and drive in the city. It is located 40 kilometers from us. During the trip we hang continuously on the phone. A good friend of mine is living for a year in Beirut. He calls us every few minutes, every phone call, he knows more: two explosions, the houses of the city, a plunge, and everywhere hurt. It is a completely absurd Situation. Hundreds of cars come towards us. It seems as if they were on the run. Anyone who can leaves the city.
photo: Serkan Eren
Eren saw cars thrown into the air and complete the course were filled.
After explosions in Beirut: scenes from the war
25 minutes later we arrive in the centre. On the streets of rubble. Everywhere Ash. It looks like that’s the rage in Beirut for ten years of war. The mood of almost apocalyptic. I can’t even imagine, that we are changed from three to four hours by this completely normal city family. I don’t know you. It is obscured by rubble. I meet Locals on the streets who tell me that they have experienced the civil war. But, like today, that you have never seen before.
photo: Serkan Eren the streets of The city lie under the rubble, many houses collapsed.
I walk to houses that are completely destroyed. Some still stand, but collapsed. I can’t imagine that there is a house in the city, which has gotten nothing. A friend who lives seven, eight kilometers from the port, there is no window yet. Known to say to me, you have felt the shock wave even on the island of Crete.
wounded on the streets, hands between concrete slabs
I’m cleaning up the rubble from the roads so the ambulance can get through. You can hardly drive through the narrow streets, rubble everywhere on the Asphalt. I pull Branches and small trees which obstruct the way of the streets. Again and again I hear screams. People who call desperately for help. I up run in the houses, stairs and come across injured people in their homes. I have no means to care of it. But people need to get out of their homes before all about them collapses. Injured and old people, I carry on the road. A minimum of 15.
From time to time, I find water bottles on the street and bring something to drink for the people. Most of them are wounded from broken glass. I see faces, clothes, arms full of blood. Many have wounds superficial cut. Some of the cuts are deeper. You need as quickly as possible to medical care. I see wounds and people with space, have to get scree to the head. In the case of any serious injury I run to find due to the destroyed roads and attempts for an ambulance. Hopeless. Almost impossible. It hardly see what. I don’t speak Arabic, hardly anyone understands my English. I can hardly help.
photo: Serkan on Eren
Until after midnight cleared Eren and the other helpers and took care of the wounded.
Six hours I’ll be in the city, clean the streets and take care of the injured. I see lifeless hands between two concrete slabs, the Rest of the body is buried. Individual parts of the body look under the rubble. Surely all of these people are dead.
bewilderment the next day,
I go back to my accommodation, 800 metres from the Explosion site away. It is completely destroyed, reduced to rubble. My suitcase was pulled out, my documents and my passport. The stuff is full of glass splinters. I’m standing right next to me. I can not think clearly. The day after that, I go back to the city and continue to help. Actually, I had planned on 10. To fly in August, and back to Germany. If I’m really doing this, I can’t say yet. But I assume that I will stay longer.
eye-witnesses-Videos all show the devastating explosions force in Beirut, FOCUS Online/Wochit Lebanese capital: witnesses-the Videos all show the devastating explosions force in Beirut
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