Lebanon explosion: Wedding video captures moment Beirut blast hit
‘I was wondering what happened, am I going to die?’ bride says
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Your support makes all the difference.A bride posing in a Beirut square had her wedding video in cut short in extraordinary fashion when an explosion hit Lebanon‘s capital.
The blast was caught in dramatic footage when it struck as Israa Seblani was smiling for the camera in a long white wedding dress.
The scene is shattered by a deafening roar, and a powerful shockwave nearly blows her off her feet.
The camera keeps rolling, and pans across broken doors and a square with items strewn all over the ground.
The bride can be seen moving away with others in the background.
The dramatic footage captured the moment when a massive explosion rocked the Lebanese capital on Tuesday, killing 135 people and injuring more than 5,000.
Ms Seblani, a doctor working in the US, helped to check on the injured nearby, before fleeing central Beirut’s Saifi square to safety.
A day later, she and her husband, 34-year-old Ahmad Subeih, a businessman in Beirut, were struggling to process what happened.
“I have been preparing for my big day for two weeks and I was so happy like all other girls, ‘I am getting married’,’ she said.
“My parents are going to be happy seeing me in a white dress, I will be looking like a princess.”
Ms Seblani added: “What happened during the explosion here – there is no word to explain ... I was shocked, I was wondering what happened, am I going to die? How am I going to die?”
Behind her in the video, piles of smashed glass from the blown-out windows of the hotel where she was due to stay littered the ground, along with crushed remnants of flower arrangements that had adorned banquet tables.
Ms Seblani had arrived in Beirut three weeks earlier to prepare for her wedding.
Mr Subeih recalled the aftermath of the blast, which officials have blamed on a huge stockpile of highly explosive material stored for years in unsafe conditions at the port.
“We started to walk around and it was extremely sad, it was not describable the devastation and the sound of the explosion,” he said.
“I feel so sad about what happened to other people, about what happened to Lebanon,” added Ms Seblani. “When I woke up and saw the damage that happened to Beirut, the one thing I said was thank God we are still alive.”
Mr Subeih recalls entering the damaged hotel on Wednesday to retrieve belongings and passports. “The scene in the room was unbelievable,” he said.
He is waiting for a visa to the US so he can join his wife there. Ms Seblani loves Lebanon, but feels after Tuesday’s blast, living there is not an option.
The blast wreaked havoc across Beirut on Tuesday, with the city’s governor estimating up to 300,000 people have been left unable to sleep in their own homes.
The Lebanese prime minister has declared three days of mourning from Thursday.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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