See the Moment a Bride, a Baby, a BBC Reporter Felt the Beirut Blast

The initial blast of Tuesday’s devastating explosion in Beirut—which has killed at least 100 and injured thousands more—rocked the city’s BBC bureau so severely it knocked a reporter to the floor as she conducted a remote interview. Nearby, women and several children were caught on home security footage watching the explosion from their couch before the blast knocked windows into them. 

In another video, a terrified bride posing for photographs ran away amid the chaos—holding up her wedding dress as she abandoned her bouquet in distress. 

The videos are among many that captured the horror of the explosion in Beirut’s downtown business district. Lebanese officials say the massive blast was likely the result of 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate—a highly explosive chemical—stored in the Lebanese capital city’s port. 

Powerful shock waves shattered glass, collapsed ceilings and pulled down balconies—even residents on the island nation of Cyprus, 110 miles away, felt the explosion. As of Wednesday, at least 300,000 residents have been displaced from their homes as rescue workers continue to dig through the rubble for survivors amid ongoing fires still smoldering the twisted metal and debris. 

Terrifying new video footage released Wednesday shows the moment the deadly explosion hit while BBC Urdu reporter Maryem Taoumi had just begun interviewing Faisal Al-Aseel of the Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy. Behind her, the initial blast in Beirut’s port can be seen shaking the office around her. 

As Taoumi stood up from her desk to investigate—her computer’s camera still running—the massive second blast hit the BBC bureau. The footage, released Wednesday morning, shows the dramatic interruption as well as the aftermath.

In another video, a mother and her three young children can be seen in their Beirut apartment, standing close together as they watch the explosion. Suddenly, two windows crash into them, bringing a cloud of dust into the home. 

“Oh my god,” one of the family members is heard saying in the video. 

A similar scene was captured in another video, in which a woman drops her vacuum and quickly scoops up a child to run to safety as the windows around them shatter. 

In another video, which has been viewed more than 2 million times on Twitter, a bride poses for photos outside—showing off her white wedding dress with her hand on her hip. 

As the camera pans to her bouquet on the ground, the explosion rips through, pushing the camera away from the bride as dust flies in every direction. The videographer runs to safety, while the bride can be seen fleeing in the background, the train of her dress flying in the air. 

Nearby, a Beirut priest was caught on a church’s livestream running in terror as debris and stained-glass windows fell down from above. Even as the church was violently shaking, the priest tried to continue mass, but he fled seconds later as dust and rubble began to fall.