Huge fire extinguished at oil facility in southern Lebanon

By FADI TAWIL
Associated Press

ZAHRANI, Lebanon (AP) — Firefighters have extinguished a huge blaze that broke out in a storage tank at one of Lebanon’s main oil facilities in the country’s south. Monday’s fire lasted more than three hours and sent orange flames and a thick black column of smoke into the sky. The cause was not clear. It came after a fire at Beirut’s port in August 2020 preceded a massive explosion that killed at least 215 people, wounded thousands more and destroyed the facility and nearby neighborhoods. The blast at Beirut’s port was caused by hundreds of tons of explosive ammonium nitrate used in fertilizers that had been improperly stored for years.