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UN Ramps Up Humanitarian Efforts Following Beirut Blast

Lisa Schlein

   GENEVA - U.N. agencies are revising their emergency appeals to keep
   pace with the growing needs of hundreds of thousands of survivors of
   last week's devastating explosions in Lebanon's capital, Beirut. The
   United Nations is expected to issue a comprehensive multimillion-dollar
   flash appeal for humanitarian aid Friday.

   Aid workers only now are coming to grips with the magnitude of the
   disaster. More than 150 people reportedly have been killed, with around
   600,000 injured, including 100,000 children. Homes, buildings and
   infrastructure have been damaged and destroyed, rendering an estimated
   300,000 homeless.

   U.N. Development Program crisis adviser Rekha Das, on a video link from
   Beirut, said the blast that hit the capital has impacted all of
   Lebanon.

   "The coping capacities of the people in Lebanon have been tried beyond
   anybody's imagination -- through a crippling economic crisis, the
   COVID-19 pandemic that we are all so familiar with and aware of, and
   now the blast. '¦ Within seconds, Beirut was covered in layers and
   layers of debris," Das said.

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