a blast that's years. but it is a blast that's killed at least ten people we are hearing, and may have injured around 500 others. you are watching bbc news, james reynolds is coming up with much more at the top of the hour. this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. a massive explosion rocks the lebanese capital of beirut. many people are injured and buildings are badly damaged. i lost my hearing for a few seconds. i knew something was wrong, and then suddenly the glass just shattered all over the car, the cars around us, the shops, the stores, the buildings. just glass going down from all over the buildings. scientists warn the uk government needs to improve the test and trace system before schools re—open as it's boss denies it's a failure. guy's, as it's boss denies it's a failure. one, two, three, f

teenagers in scotland are the first in the uk to get their results after key school qualifications exams were cancelled — pass rates rise but thousands of results are downgraded. doctors in england, northern ireland and wales are told not to prescrible common painkillers to patients with chronic pain. spain's former king, juan carlos, abandons his country weeks after being linked to a corruption investigation. hello and welcome. a huge explosion has rocked the capital of lebanon, beirut. government officials there say at least ten people have been killed and large numbers more have been injured in the blast, which happened a few hours ago in the port area of the city. hospitals are said to be overwhelmed with casualties, firefighters are tackling numerous blazes. eyewitnesses say balconies collapsed and people were left trapped under rubble. the explosion was felt across large parts of the city,

with reports of damage from as far as six miles away. surrounding buildings were devastated. it's not yet known what caused the explosion, but some reports suggest that it was triggered by a fire in a warehouse storing fireworks. —— highly explosive material but not explosives. this report from james robbins. a massive explosion sent shock waves tearing through the lebanese capital. the blast happened in the port area. it looked as if the first explosion was followed by another much larger explosion which swept through many nearby buildings. lebanon's health minister said there had been many injuries and widespread damage. i saw the fire but i did not know that was going to be an explosion.

we went inside and suddenly i lost my hearing — i was too close. i lost my hearing for a few seconds. i knew something was wrong, and then suddenly the glass just shattered all over the car, the cars around us, the shops, the stores, the buildings. just glass going down from all over the buildings. firefighters are tackling numerous blazes while medical teams are searching for casualties in what is now a full—scale emergency. james robbins, bbc news. a little earlier, eyewitness mohamad najem told me what he'd experienced. i heard two big explosions. i thought the building was going down. i didn't know what was happening. i was trying to hide. i'm bleeding a bit from my feet — i'm 0k, though. yeah, all the buildings around me are just fully — all the glass has been destroyed,

all the doors are broken. i mean, this took me back in the memories to 2006, when israel was bombing lebanon, and i thought i was going to die. ijust had the same feeling today. you thought you were going to die? yes, this is the feeling i had. i mean, i think many people had the same feeling. one neighbour... i mean, people are just devastated, with the currency, this... in the moments after you heard the explosion and all the glass broke, did you all go out to the streets? tell me what you did in the 5—10 minutes after, all of you? i live on the 11th floor, so i was thinking if they're bombing the building, then there is no reason to run away

anyway. i'm on the 11th floor, so ijust sat in the corner remembering what happened in 2006 with me. i don't know, maybe it's bad luck living in this country. and, mohamad, obviously we continue to try to work out what happened, what caused the explosion. it is interesting that you say as soon as you all heard the explosion, it brought back those memories of previous explosions in beirut? that's correct. and how old are you now, if i can ask you? what do you do? i'm 39, i run an ngo, we work with technology and human rights. that's what i do. understood, and when you were down on the street, did you talk to each other, try to find out what is happening? what was the atmosphere

like in the moments after the explosion? i didn't go on the street, i live on the 11th floor, so i went onto the rooftop. i'm so sorry, upstairs. the look from upstairs, it looked like there was a lot of damages. we didn't know what happened, we heard something like an explosion in the port, which is 200 metres away from where we live. that was mohamad najem there, essentially an ear witness to what happened. it seemed everyone in beirut witnessed it. among them was the journalist lizzie porter. it was around 6:10pm, early evening here in beirut, it was like a roar of thunder and it shook my apartment building. it was like an earthquake going through the building. i walked towards the door because...

normally, we hear helicopters overhead, we hear motorbikes around us, but this was different noise. and then this roll of thunder like noise, then an enormous bang. and i was blown back from the door, which is now broken and we have no door on our apartment building, and a spray of glass, as well. all around us, people screaming. and we are about a kilometre and a half from the port side, so the destruction and the spread of this is really quite extensive. lizzie, to explain to our viewers, we are showing a number of pictures taken by you in the aftermath. that's about 1.5 km away. we've seen some of the damage there. that's 1.5 km away, and that gives us a sense of the power of the blast felt across the capital city.

absolutely, the whole building shook, and people in the mountains... as soon as it happened, my whatsapp was filling with messages from people stayed in the mountains — "oh, my goodness, did you feel that?" their buildings were shaking up there. really, really... significant casualties down in the area of the port. and in the aftermath of the explosion, were you able to talk to other people around that area ? what was the sense of people's mood, of the atmosphere? we have a lot of elderly neighbours in our district that we live in, the residential district. so people were screaming, screaming that the property had been destroyed.

down towards the centre of the city, the scale of the destruction increases. people are panicked. the situation is already tense. we are going through a lockdown, the economy is collapsing. people are already tense. people have already lost a lot of property through economic collapse, so now to have this damage happen from this event, and it also brings back memories of a previous explosion back in 2005 when the former prime minister rafic hariri was killed in a massive car bomb. elderly residents here and older residents here, that immediately brings back that kind of traumatic memories. that was lizzie porter from that was lizzie porterfrom beirut. let's bring you life pictures from the lebanese capital. you can see the lebanese capital. you can see the fire in the industrial area. you

canjust the fire in the industrial area. you can just about here some sirens there, suggesting that the emergency relief effort, there's a closer shot of it there, will take some time to conclude. it is worth saying that the lebanese president is calling a meeting of, an urgent meeting, of the defence counsel as investigations go on as to the cause of that explosion and we will review any political updates from lebanon as soon as we get them —— the defence council. i heard from eyewitness hadi nasrallah earlier in that i heard from eyewitness hadi nasrallah earlier. you heard a little bit of him in that report from james robbins. he lives close to where the blast took place. let's hear more of what he told me. so basically i was in the taxi,

it is an area still on the coast, so i can still see what's going on. i saw the fire but i didn't know there was going to be an explosion. we went inside, and suddenly i lost my hearing. apparently i was too close. so i lost my hearing for a few seconds, i knew something was wrong, and suddenly the glass just shattered all over the car, the cars around us, the stores, the buildings. just glass going down all over the building. first impression, i thought it was an explosion. i instantly thought it was an assassination attack, because usually, it happens in that area. it was very scary, it was loud, it was very loud. but once i looked at the smoke, it wasn't dark and black as we usually witness, because i live in beirut‘s southern suburb and we had a wave of car bombs the past years. so looking at the smoke, i knew it was something else, not a car bomb necessarily. because of the colour of the smoke? it was the colour of the smoke. usually it is dark and black, just going around.

this time, it was pinkish, and it looked like a volcano, which was very weird. it was the first time i've ever seen something like that after an explosion, so i didn't initially suspect it was a car bomb. so in those years where beirut has had political assassinations, explosions, air strikes, the explosions looked very different from the explosion you sawjust now? the smoke would rise dramatically and it would be very dark, very black. this time, it looked kind of pink and light, a little bit white, which is why i knew it wasn't an attack. forgive me, were you with anyone else? yeah. and what happened to them? the taxi driver was slightly injured because the glass fell on him, i was sitting in the back so i just got... the window blast fell on me.

it didn't hurt me as much as him because the car glass went into his face. your driver, the windscreen — did the glass break? he was able to pull over? how did he manage to drive to safety? the thing is, we didn't know what happened, so the carjust suddenly stopped because we both lost our hearing for seconds before we heard the explosion, which we knew something was wrong. we stopped the car, then when the glass broke, i started speaking to him. i saw blood on him, he told me he was ok and to go home. so i went and i saw another cab, and i told him i have to go to that area. i made sure he was ok, hejust had slight injuries on his face. he was calling his family. laith ballout is in beirut and was a few kilometres away from where the explosion went off. thanks forjoining us. how loud was it? it was something of never experience before in my life. quite

traumatic. all of a sudden, i heard a small thump, thunder, like in the background and then a few seconds later, the shock wave and just dust, like a sandstorm, and everyone dropped to the ground. an armour opening my eyes and looking at the ground and just seeing dust and rubble just floating in the mall that we were in. and then all of a sudden, glass breaking and then the alarm, likea sudden, glass breaking and then the alarm, like a war alarm, going off and looked up into the sky because the mall had an open sky and just see this huge cloud of red and pink and orange smoke, and, yeah, very scary. were you physically injured? were those around you physically injured? yes, there was people physically injured around me, so the mall had a glass in the storefront, all of it broke and there was blood on the floor. probably from the shattered glass that hit them. there

was a lady outside when we left the mall, when we evacuated the mall, she was in the parking lot, under in the parking lot, much more than the open sky, where we were and a p pa re ntly open sky, where we were and apparently she was metres from the shock wave —— thrown metres from the shock wave —— thrown metres from the shock wave. people had to drag her out. it was intense. intense time. sorry? how are you now? are you shaken? a little bit, i'm not going to lie, a little shaken. i was sending a voice note to my friend expend what happened and putting myself back in that time, i even got a bit of goose bumps, but i am relieved that it is not any war or anything starting, because in the area, there can be tension. i am sad for the people who lost their loved

ones and family members in the explosion. like i said, i was on the road right next to the warehouse where the explosion happened. 45 minutes before the explosion occurred. i am quite shook up from the whole incident. laith, you are lucky not to be there? yes, we were actually visiting a furniture shop, and thank god my dad said let's go sooner than later, because we could been instead of kilometres away, a few hundred metres away. 0k, laith ballout, thank you so much. we can talk now to leila molana—allen, reporter for france 24. every person i've spoken to, i have begun by asking the same question. how did you hear the blast?” begun by asking the same question. how did you hear the blast? i was in the apartment about a kilometre away, i could see from the window,

andi away, i could see from the window, and i was actually looking into... i could hear ambulances. he then heard what sounded like some sort of aircraft flying in currently low over the stood aircraft flying in currently low ove we're stood aircraft flying in currently low ove we're that d