President Michel Aoun said 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, used in fertilisers and bombs, had been stored for six years at the port without safety measures after it was seized. The explosion was the strongest ever to rip through Beirut, a city still scarred by the civil war that ended three decades ago and reeling from an economic meltdown and a surge in coronavirus infections. The blast rattled buildings on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, about 160 km away. Nearly 5,000 people were injured in Tuesday's explosion at Beirut port, and tens of thousands were left without homes fit to live in after shockwaves smashed building facades, sucked furniture out into streets and shattered glass miles inland.