Photos: A look back at the massive explosion that rocked Beirut

A giant mushroom cloud rises in Beirut, Lebanon on Aug. 4, 2020.

Two huge explosions rocked the Lebanese capital, wounding thousands of people, flattening much of a port, and shaking buildings across Beirut. 

People survey the scene of the explosion.

A wounded man is checked by a firefighter near the site of the explosion.

Lebanese health minister Hamad Hasan said 135 people have been killed and 5,000 injured in the explosion. Dozens of people are still missing.

Those figures look set to rise with hospitals overwhelmed and victims still trapped underneath debris.

A man is evacuated at the site of the explosion.

Injured people are evacuated from the scene.

The Lebanese Red Cross confirmed on Twitter that it had more than 30 teams, including ambulances, responding to the blast and had put out an urgent call for blood donations.

People help a man wounded from the blast.

People search the perimeter of a destroyed silo. 

Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Twitter that the Public Health Ministry would meet the expenses of treating the wounded and that the government would provide shelter and support to displaced families whose properties were damaged.

Firefighters evacuate a wounded man. 

A man reacts at the scene of the twin blasts.

Debris covers a main road in Beirut at sunset.

A helicopter puts out a fire at the port.

"I will not rest until we find the person responsible for what happened, to hold him accountable and impose the most severe penalties," Prime Minister Hassan Diab said.

Diab said it was "unacceptable" that a shipment of ammonium nitrate estimated at 2,750 tons had been in warehouse for six years without "preventive measures" to protect it. The chemical compound, which is commercially available, is used widely in fertilizers and explosives.

Wounded people walk through the debris in the heart of Beirut.

Smoke rises from the port. 

A wounded man walks through debris in Beirut's Gemmayzeh district.

Wounded people receive treatment in the parking lot of Al Roum Hospital.

It wasn't clear what ignited the shipment, but at least 4,000 people were injured and 100 others were killed, the secretary-general of the Lebanese Red Cross, George Kettana, told Lebanese broadcaster LBCI on Wednesday.

The number of casualties could rise — some of the injuries are serious and some people are still trapped under rubble, Kettana said.

A rescue worker tends to an injured man.

Rescue crews search a street for survivors after the cataclysmic explosion caused buildings to collapse.

The massive damage done to Beirut port's grain silos and the area around it on Aug. 5.

Many in Lebanon's capital saw their apartments destroyed and family members injured, with daylight revealing scenes of destruction not witnessed in the country since its devastating civil war, which ended in 1990.

A man inspects the damage following Tuesday's blast in Beirut's port area.

People walk past a damaged boat at the port on Wednesday.

Lebanese soldiers search for survivors.

A huge rescue operation and an international aid effort got underway Wednesday, less than 24 hours after much of Beirut was buried by rubble and choked by smoke.

A man stands in a damaged apartment as he looks out at the port.

A damaged hospital.

The governor of Beirut, Marwan Abboud, said the cost of the damage to the capital, already under economic pressure, could be between $3 billion and $5 billion, adding that the explosion had made at least 200,000 people homeless.

The damaged facade of a building near to the port.

The blast was so big, it could be felt and heard throughout much of the city and as far as the island of Cyprus — about 145 miles away.

A man walks through debris on a residential street on Wednesday.

A survivor is taken out of the rubble.

A man removes religious icons from the floor of a damaged church.

Rescue workers were digging in the rubble Wednesday as plumes of smoke still rose above the city.