Beirut port boss puts blast damage at $350m, upbeat on future

Beirut port boss puts blast damage at $350m, upbeat on future

Beirut Port will never lose its strategic geographic position and is irreplaceable even after the huge blast on August 4, according to its boss.

Port director Bassem Al Qaissi spoke to Arabian Business amid rising concerns in Beirut about the ongoing normalisation talks with Israel which raises the question of whether the Port of Haifa, the largest in Israel, may impact shipping movements in the future.

Beirut Container Terminal Consortium sources tell Arabian Business nearly 12,000 containers were unloaded between August 11-24

Lebanon and Israel last week agreed to a framework for US-mediated talks aimed at ending a long-running dispute along the border between the two nations that have fought several conflicts.

Haifa is one of the largest ports in the eastern Mediterranean in terms of freight volume and handles about 30 million tons