In the wake of the Beirut explosion, it took a team effort to piece together what happened that day

From Beirut to Moscow, our journalists on the ground worked together to provide comprehensive coverage of the unfolding disaster in Lebanon, writes Gemma Fox

A wounded man is helped by a firefighter near the scene of the explosion in Beirut on 4 August (AFP/Getty)

Last week’s explosion in Beirut took us all by complete surprise. We watched in horror and disbelief the terrible videos starting to circulate on social media – the initial fire, the huge mushroom cloud towering over the port and the ear-piercing bang that followed, shattering windows, mangling houses and killing more than 200 people.

Unlike the opinion of some, Beirut is not “used to conflict.” The city’s residents are not “resilient” and accustomed to death and devastation. The civil war, which seems to be mentioned in any story about Lebanon, is not a period that the country’s youth grew up under. For those who frequented Gemmayzeh over the years – myself included – there was not a sense of imminent danger and brewing unrest (or that there was a huge pile of explosives nearby).

It was not ‘the Paris of the Middle East’ – it was Beirut, and it was beautiful.