Forty-eight hours after the explosion of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate in the port of Beirut, the streets of the most affected neighborhoods were swarming with volunteers armed with shovels and brooms to clean up the damage. "It hurts your heart to see people who have lost their homes," says Mia, a high school student from Roumié, a town 10 km east of Beirut spared by the explosion. About a hundred young people like Mia came from all over Lebanon to lend a hand to the inhabitants under the blazing sun, with the support of the charity Caritas Lebanon.
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“I felt compelled to help the capital of my country. I feel the same pain as them, ” says Reem, another high school student. “The explosion broke my heart,” she says, clearing an apartment on the first floor of a building with a direct view of the port and the Mediterranean. Today it is uninhabitable. The shock of the explosion shattered the windows with such force that debris pierced the bedroom doors,
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