It was supposedly the happiest day of her life – until her entire world shook, literally.
A happy couple in Beirut was spending a blissful moment recording their prenuptial photoshoot when all of a sudden a massive explosion, which now has reportedly claimed the lives of at least 130 people and left 5,000 injured with hundreds still missing, took place in a port at the Lebanon capital.
Here is the video captured and posted by Mahmoud Nakib via his YouTube Channel:
[Watch] Bridal Photoshoot Interrupted by Horrific Beirut Blast
Dr. Israa Seblani and Ahmad Sbeih were on the streets of Beirut on Tuesday, with Seblani posing for the camera in a dramatic, white wedding gown. It was a day like any other in the city’s Saifi Village, the doctor recounts, with people out and about shopping and dining in restaurants.
Then all of a sudden, a loud noise was heard from a distance, followed by a deafening blast that was captured on video by the couple’s wedding photographer, Mahmoud Nakib.
In an interview with CNN, Nakib said: “We were filming an outdoor photo session for the (Seblani and Sbeih) wedding, then we heard an explosion.”
“That was the first explosion, we thought that it was far away, so we continued filming normally,” he added.
However, a few seconds after that, as we can see in the video, the entire situation changed.
Nakib shared, “In just one second, the sky turned black and we heard the second explosion.”
When the explosion went off, an intense gust of wind created by the explosion’s shockwave roared through the square, as seen in the video.
Seblani shared, “The area I was in — within a matter of seconds — it went from this beautiful place to a ghost town filled with dust, shattered glass and people yelling [and] bleeding. It was like a nightmare scene.”
Meanwhile, Nakib recounted that he was shaken by the shockwave, pushing him down the street nearly knocking him over. But his camera kept rolling, shakily documenting the chaotic scene for a few seconds longer.
As this happened, Seblani, Nakib, and the rest of the wedding party headed inside as the blast echoed through the streets of Beirut. Fortunately, no one was hurt during the incident.
Nakib shared that as he was running, he first thought about his wife and daughter back home. “I called her to let her know that I’m fine and do not go out. And I went live at Facebook to let people know what happened.“
The explosion at the Lebanese capital wiped out entire city streets, leaving hundreds of thousands of the city’s residents homeless and damaging structures as far as six miles away.
The blast was suspected to have come from a warehouse storing thousands of tons of an unsecured and volatile chemical compound, although investigations as to the cause of the incident are still ongoing as of this writing.
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