Lebanon’s president admitted about the 2,750 tons of high explosive chemicals stored at the port in Beirut last month

News24xx.com - Lebanon’s president admitted Friday that he knew about the 2,750 tons of high explosive chemicals stored at the port in Beirut last month, almost three weeks before the material led to a deadly explosion this week.

Tuesday’s blast killed at least 137 — four more bodies, including that of a 23-year-old worker, was recovered Friday — wounded thousands more and destroyed surrounding residential neighborhoods in the Middle Eastern country.

Since 2014, authorities from the country’s customs, military, security, and judiciary agencies warned about the stockpile of chemicals at least 10 times, the outlet notes.

Read more: Attack of Racism; Give Salute in the style of Nazis and Despicable Black Man, Married Wives Arrested

Prior to this week, Lebanon had already been contending with a severe economic crisis as well as the strain coronavirus has put on hospitals, now compounded by the explosion.

Losses stemming from the blast have been estimated at $10 to $15 billion by officials.

While France is leading the way in international aid to Lebanon — and 22 French investigators are probing the explosion — French President Emmanuel Macron said the European nation won’t give “blank checks to a system that no longer has the trust of its people.”

On Wednesday, the Lebanese government said multiple port officials who “handled the affairs of storing [the] ammonium nitrate, guarding it and handling its paperwork” had been put under house arrest pending an investigation.

“What criminal negligence it took to leave this highly explosive material right in the very heart of the city, within yards of people, their homes, their businesses,” BBC News writer Quentin Sommerville, who’s lived in the Lebanese capital for five years, wrote this week of officials’ “enormously stupid” move.

“I’ve known all the time that we are led by incompetent people, incompetent government,” Beirut resident Chadia Elmeouchi Noun told the BBC while hospitalized.

Read more: Revealed! It turns out that this is the origin of the ammonium nitrate that caused the big explosion in Beirut

While the tragedy “appears to be an accident,” as Dominique Abbenanti, France’s No. 2 forensic police official said Friday, investigators don’t know for certain at this early stage.

That said, he told the AP he anticipates the death toll to increase.

The UN Human Rights Office is also investigating.