DORMANT BUT DEADLY

On August 4, 2020, an explosion of over 2,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate ripped through a Beirut quayside, killing 220 people and triggering an earthquake measuring 3.3 on the Richter scale.

- Sandeep Unnithan

The blast, later assessed as being equivalent to around 500-1,100 tonnes of TNT, was the third most devastating urban explosion after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Six months later, convoys of Indian Army trucks began snaking out of some Indian ports, among them Mumbai, Kandla and Mundra. Inside the 20- and 40-foot long containers the trucks carried were over 1,600 tonnes of war scrap— artillery rounds, rockets, bombs, grenades and mortars, most of it imported from West Asian battlefields nearly two decades ago. The convoys were part of Operation ‘Visphotak-mukt Bandargah (explosive-free ports)’, a year-long effort quietly executed in the midst of two waves of the pandemic. The objective: to safely dispose of war scrap that had the potential to cause a mini-Beirut on Indian soil. From the 1,600 tonnes of scrap collected from the ports, the army recovered nearly two tonnes of RDX and TNT. Army officials believe this to be one of the world’s largest disposals of unexploded ordnance. More importantly, they point out, it was achieved with zero casualties.