Not sure how much the ammonium nitrate participated in the blast, but maybe it contributed. For sure it would burn like hell.
Set off my "Confiscated high explosives".
"Major General Abbas Ibrahim, of Lebanon's General Security Directorate, said the massive blast that shook Beirut's port area on Tuesday was caused by confiscated “high explosive materials.”
It would be "naive to describe such an explosion as due to fireworks," Ibrahim told Lebanese TV."
https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live...s-dle-intl/h_e6713bdae252e2feee83a4e3263c09ac
https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/lebanon-beirut-explosion-live-updates-dle-intl/index.html
"Robert Baer, a former CIA operative with extensive experience in the Middle East, said videos of Tuesday's blast showed that while ammonium nitrate may have been present in the warehouse, he does not believe it was responsible for the massive explosion that ensued.
Initial reports blamed the blast on a major fire at a warehouse for firecrackers near the port, according to Lebanese state news agency NNA.
Lebanon's Prime Minister, Hassan Diab, later said that 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive material used in fertilizers and bombs, had been stored for six years at a port warehouse without safety measures, "endangering the safety of citizens," according to a statement.
Baer said he thinks that there were military munitions and propellants present. He speculated it could have been a weapons cache, but it's unclear who it belongs to."
"It was clearly a military explosive," he said. "It was not fertilizer like ammonium nitrate. I'm quite sure of that."
"You look at that orange ball (of fire), and it's clearly, like I said, a military explosive."
Baer noted that white powder seen in the videos of the incident before the major blast are likely an indicator that ammonium nitrate was present and burning. He also noticed a lot of munitions going off ahead of the larger explosion.
No evidence of an attack: Baer said while he believes the explosion does not look like solely ammonium nitrate, there's still no evidence that this was an attack. The government has blamed poor management and vowed to get to the bottom of it.
"It almost looks like an accident," he said. "It was incompetence, and maybe it was corruption, but the question is whether it was military explosives, who was it going to or why was it stored there?"
So far, France, Russia, Iraq, Kuwait have started sending field hospitals and doctors to Lebanon to help with the recovery.
The US has also offered to help.
"EU officials will urgently deploy "over 100 highly trained firefighters, with vehicles, dogs and equipment, specialised in search and rescue in urban contexts," EU Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič said in a statement from published Wednesday.
The Netherlands, Greece and the Czech Republic will participate in the scheme and France, Poland and Germany have also offered to assist Lebanon."