At least 78 people were killed in a massive explosion that shook the Lebanese capital, Beirut, on Tuesday evening, Lebanon's health minister told Reuters.
It's still unclear what exactly caused the explosion, which appears to have been centered on the city's port area. It was earlier blamed on a fire that broke out.
Lebanon's Prime Minister said that an estimated 2,750 tons of the explosive ammonium nitrate had been stored at a warehouse in Beirut for six years.
A CNN senior international correspondent said the blast felt like an earthquake, while one witness said she had never felt an explosion like it in the city.
It's an earthquake, I thought, as the CNN bureau in central Beirut shook Tuesday with a violence I'd never felt before. I crouched down on the floor, waiting for more tremors.
A split second later, I heard glass shatter and the crunch of metal. Peering through the window, I saw a cloud of yellow dust coming toward me, the street strewn with rubble and broken glass. People were running around and shouting, trying to understand what had happened.
I stumbled around the rest of the bureau. A window frame had been torn from the wall. The studio was a jumble of equipment, cables were scattered all over, but the tripod with its camera was still in place on the floor.
The bureau's glass entrance, with its big, red CNN logo, lay shattered in the corridor.
A few minutes later, a doorman named Mustafa, a lanky, normally good-spirited chap, came running in. "Are you ok?" he shouted. "Is everyone fine?"
"I'm fine," I responded. Nothing had happened to me.
I need money