Security official reported that the explosion of Beirut leaves 43-meter deep crater

A security official reported on Sunday that the immense chemical explosion that hit the port of Beirut, destroy a large parts of the Lebanese capital, and caused the death of 150, left a 43-meter (141 foot) deep crater.

The official informed AFP, citing reports by French experts that the explosion in the port left a crater 43 meters deep Tuesday, they evaluate the destructive area.

The explosion of Tuesday, which was felt by all people in the country and so far to Cyprus’s island, was recorded by the sensors of the American Institute of Geophysics (USGS) as having a power of a magnitude 3.3 earthquake.

According to authorities, the explosion was caused by a fire in a port warehouse, where a big shipment of dangerous ammonium nitrate, a chemical product that can be used as a fertilizer or as an explosive, had been maintained for years. The big explosion also injured almost 6,000 people and displaced more than 300,000 from their broke homes.

The detection that the chemicals which has been reserved for years, like a ticking time-bomb in the capital, is like a horrible evidence to most Lebanese of the corruption at the core of the state apparatus. On Sunday, demonstrators appealed for continuing to anti-government rallies after a night of angry protests that attack many ministries before they got out by the army.

It was a new tactic for a protest movement that has seen last October to request the removal of a political class which is accused for a long time of being inept and corrupt.

According to an international tribunal investigating the murder Rafic Hariri, the crater is much larger than the one left by the big explosion in 2005, that killed the former prime minister and it measured 10 meters and two meters deep.

French rescue and police teams are participating in a larger group of international emergency response specialists that have sent to Lebanon to help the local authorities.