hadi nasrallah lives close to where the blast took place. here's his account. a taxi, it is an area 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 and 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 it usually happens in that area. it was very scary, it was loud, it was very loud. 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

that was hadi nasrallah with a really rather remarkable eyewitness account of hearing that explosion,e lead with breaking news from lebanon. a large explosion has rocked the capital beirut. the explosion was felt across large parts of the city, shattering windows of surrounding buildings and sending a huge plume of smoke billowing into the sky. two blasts were heard in the city's port area. lebanese security forces report at least ten people dead. dozens of people are reported to have been wounded. the bbc‘s middle east analyst is sebastian otter. —— sebastian usher. it is something where you usually think of what the cause is. look at beirut, you look at lebanon, the key thing is the cause. when you see the testimony, the damage, when you hear from people kilometres away in their windows have been destroyed, offices have even inside, completely turned over, and it looks like a war zone, you just have to think that in itself, whatever the cause of this was, this is just itself, whatever the cause of this was, this isjust a huge major incident that has had beirut. and as you were sayin

hadi nasrallah was in a taxi near to the site of the explosion. here's how he described it. 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 glassjust 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. a little earlier, i spoke to the bbc‘s lina sinjab in beirut. here's how she experienced today's events. well, i'm not too far from the port. just six or seven minutes drive, maybe less if there is no tr