A year on, doctors still plucking glass from Beirut blast survivor’s body
- For Beirut blast survivor Shady Rizk, time has stopped since August 4 last year
- Gigantic explosion killed more than 200 people and injured thousands
A year after the cataclysmic Beirut port blast, Shady Rizk’s doctors are still plucking glass from his body. The latest extraction was a centimetre-long sliver above his knee pit.
“Almost every month, I find a new piece … the glass is still stuck in my thighs, my legs, and I guess, in my arms,” said Rizk, a 36-year-old network engineer who was sprayed with shards during the explosion.
“The doctors said there will continue to be glass in my body for several years,” he said.
The August 4 blast that thundered through the city levelled entire neighbourhoods, killed more than 200 people, wounded 6,500 others and pummelled the lives of survivors.
This dark blotch in Lebanon’s chaotic history has since folded into a nightmarish year amid a stalled blast probe and an accelerating financial crisis branded by the World Bank as one of the worst in modern times.
With no politicians held to account and the country facing soaring poverty, a plummeting currency, angry protests and shortages of basic items from medicine to fuel, many survivors are simmering in the lead-up to the tragedy’s first anniversary.
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Beirut blast survivors recall trauma one year after disaster struck Lebansese capital