(Eagle News) — A Filipina overseas worker who survived the horrific blasts in Beirut, Lebanon early this week described the incident that had killed at least 149 people and injured around 5,000 more.
Raquel Bautista, an OFW in Lebanon, was interviewed by EBC’s Eagle News Service Bureau in Lebanon, where she was hospitalized after being injured in the blasts.
Bautista described how glass shards injured her arms and legs, but thankfully she did not suffer major injuries.
The blasts were due to some 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate which were stored in a port in Beirut.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said that two Filipinos were killed in the blasts. Initial reports said eight Filipinos had been injured in the incident, but later reports said that the injured Filipinos were 24..
The DFA had already reached out to the family of the two Filipinos who were among those killed in the blasts which have damaged more than half of the city. The explosion was likened even to an earthquake or an atomic bomb by witnesses as fiery mushroom cloud was seen in the city as the 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate — equivalent to 1,200 tons of TNT — exploded.
Seismologists measured the event, which blew out windows at the city’s international airport nine kilometers (more than five miles) away, as the equivalent of a 3.3-magnitude earthquake.
There are around 32,000 Filipinos in Beirut.
The Philippine government has so far repatriated 1,508 FIlipinos in Lebanon since December last year.
(Eagle News Service)
