Six years on, families of more than 200 people killed in Lebanon port blast hope for justice at last

Lebanon on Tuesday marked the sixth year since a deadly blast at Beirut port, with victims and Lebanese officials expressing a renewed but cautious hope that justice could finally be served over one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.

The blast on August 4 2020, which killed more than 200 people and destroyed swathes of the capital, was thought to have been set off by hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate stored at the port.

In normal countries, we’d be done by now.

—  Paul Naggear, whose three-year-old daughter was killed in the blast.

But an investigation into the chemicals and which officials could be considered negligent was repeatedly stymied by years of political interference, with judicial officials and then-ministers continually raising legal challenges against the investigating judges that effectively paralysed the probe.

“In normal countries, we’d be done by now, and we’d be in another phase of our lives, and we’d have the right to grieve,” said Paul Naggear, whose three-year-old daughter Alexandra — nicknamed Lexou — was killed in the blast.

“When there’s no justice, it means Lexou’s life has no value.”

A turning point came in early 2025, when president Joseph Aoun and prime minister Nawaf Salam took office and immediately promised accountability for the blast.

Judge Tarek Bitar soon resumed his investigation and submitted an investigative report to the public prosecutor’s office in late March 2026.

A senior judicial official in Lebanon briefed on the investigation told Reuters that Bitar’s report included accusations against 70 individuals for various offences linked to the blast. The official could not share further details to protect the judicial process.

Following a response from the public prosecutor, Bitar will prepare a public indictment which will include the names of those accused and trigger the trial process, the official said.

Lebanon’s justice minister Adel Nassar laid a wreath at a memorial at the port on Tuesday morning.

“The state and the judiciary allow this file to go to the very end. This is a must for the relatives of the victims, for the victims themselves, for all those impacted and for the Lebanese people,” said Nassar.

“We cannot say there is a judiciary [in Lebanon] if we are silent about a disaster as big as the Beirut port blast.”

Reuters