kaboom!in the port of Beirut, Leb
...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers....
The New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
has published satellite images of the submerged hull of the ship, the MV Rhosus, on the northern edge of the port.
According to the newspaper, the 86-metre-long single-deck vessel, flying a Moldovan flag and owned by Cyprus-based businessman Igor Grechushkin, began sinking in February 2018 after years of being stranded in the port.
​The ship was carrying 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate — commonly used as an agricultural fertiliser — from Georgia to Mozambique in the autumn of 2013. It made an unscheduled stop in Beirut after it suffered a malfunction, Lebanese lawyers representing the crew wrote in 2015.
The New York Times reports, citing then-captain Boris Prokoshev, that the ship had actually docked to pick up additional cargo to be transported to Jordan for extra cash.
Port officials barred the Rhosus from sailing upon inspecting the ship, according to the lawyers, and it was abandoned by owners after charterers lost interest in the cargo.
