A charity has reported entire streets wiped out following a large explosion in Lebanon.

At least 50 people have been killed and 2,700 injured by the blast near Beirut’s harbour on Tuesday evening.

Authorities in Lebanon are yet to announce the cause of the explosion.

Save the Children said in a statement that members of their team on the ground in the city have reported entire streets destroyed and children unaccounted for.

Despite the charity’s offices in the city being badly damaged, they have pledged that a rapid response team is ready to offer support.

Jad Sakr, Save the Children’s country director in Lebanon, said: “We are shocked and devastated by the explosion today.

“The death toll may not be known for several days but we do know is that in a disaster like this, children may be hurt, shocked and separated from their parents.

“Our child protection teams are ready to support the government’s efforts, which will almost certainly go on for several days to come.

“It is vital that children and their families get access to the services they urgently need, including medical care and physical and emotional protection.”

He added: “The incident could not have occurred at a worst time and has hit communities who were already suffering from the impact of the Covid-19 crisis and the economic deterioration.

“Beirut’s main port, now completely damaged, is vital for much of the food, grains and fuel that Lebanon imports, and families will immediately feel the shortage in basic needs as a result of this tragedy.”

The UK has also pledged help, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson saying the Government is “ready to provide support in any way we can”.

It a tweet on Tuesday evening he also wrote: “The pictures and videos from Beirut tonight are shocking.

“All of my thoughts and prayers are with those caught up in this terrible incident.”

Jordan said on Thursday it would lead a campaign to raise funds for the U.N. agency that supports Palestinian refugees, to help it survive after the United States cut its funding.

Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said a meeting next month in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly would mobilise support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to continue core education and health services.

“Any shortage in funding will drive hundreds of thousands towards deprivation and despair,” Safadi, whose country has 2.2 million U.N. registered Palestinian refugees, said in Amman after meeting Pierre Krahenbuhl, the UNRWA head. Jordan will call for an Arab League meeting to lobby for donors to cover the $200 million shortfall needed to shore up UNRWA, Safadi said.

UNRWA has faced a cash crisis since the United States, long its biggest donor, earlier this year slashed funding, saying the agency needed to make unspecified reforms and calling on the Palestinians to renew peace talks with Israel.

The agency was founded in 1949 after the first Arab-Israel war, in the wake of the exodus of around 700,000 refugees who fled or were driven out of Israel on its founding as a state.

UNRWA now looks after more than 5 million descendants of those original refugees, in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“One cannot wish 5.3 million Palestine refugees away. These are people who have rights and for many years now, for decades have faced a plight and injustice that is simply immense,” UNRWA’s Krahenbuhl said at a news conference with Safadi.

“As long as a just a lasting solution has not found of the issue of Israel-Palestine conflict we will continue to implement the mandate that the General Assembly has given us.”

The Palestinians assert the right under international law to return to homes abandoned in Israel or be compensated. Safadi said funding cuts for UNRWA undermine that right.

“The continuation of UNRWA means continued commitment by the international community to working towards a just solution of the refugees that guarantees the right of return and compensation,” Safadi said.

Safadi last week raised the plight of UNRWA with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington where officials say he warned of “dangerous consequences” to regional stability if the financial crisis were not resolved.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah used drones to strike Islamic State in Syria close to the border with Lebanon, a military media unit it runs said on Monday, their first public declaration that they had used such a weapon.

Hezbollah deployed the drones to hit Islamic State positions, bunkers and fortifications in the Western Qalamoun area near the border with Lebanon, achieving direct hits, the military media unit said.

An official in the military alliance fighting in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told Reuters it was the first time Hezbollah had declared its use of the weapons.

Footage released by the media unit seemingly taken from a drone, showed two types of munition, one of them with a tail fin, dropping towards the ground and explosions as they hit.

Early on Saturday Hezbollah and the Syrian army began an operation against an Islamic State enclave straddling the border with Lebanon in Syria’s Western Qalamoun.

The Lebanese army began a separate but simultaneous operation against the same jihadist pocket from inside Lebanon.

Any joint operation between the Lebanese army on the one hand and the Syrian army on the other would be politically sensitive in Lebanon and could jeopardise the U.S. military aid the country receives.

Islamic State holds the last militant pocket on the border after a Hezbollah offensive last month that forced Nusra Front militants to leave for rebel-held Idlib province in Syria.

Northeastern Lebanon was the scene of one of the worst spillovers from Syria’s civil war in 2014 when Islamic State and Nusra Front militants attacked the town of Arsal.

Convoys of buses arrived on Monday to transfer thousands of Syrian militants and refugees from Lebanon’s border region into rebel territory in Syria in exchange for Hezbollah prisoners. Under a local ceasefire between the Sunni Muslim militants and the Shi’ite Hezbollah, about 9,000 fighters and their relatives were to leave. With no sign of any buses leaving, the departure was delayed to Tuesday from Monday for “logistical” reasons including having to wait for the rest of a total of 98 coaches to arrive from the Syrian side, a Hezbollah media unit said.

The deal includes the departure of all Nusra Front militants from Lebanon’s border region around the town of Arsal, along with any civilians in nearby refugee camps who wish to go. The truce echoes deals struck within Syria in which Damascus has shuttled rebels and civilians to Idlib province and other opposition areas. Such evacuations have helped President Bashar al-Assad recapture several rebel bastions over the past year. Lebanon’s Hezbollah has played a major role in fighting militants along the frontier during Syria’s six-year war, sending thousands of combatants to support Assad’s government. Last week, Hezbollah took most of the mountainous zone of Jroud Arsal in a joint offensive with the Syrian army to drive Nusra militants from their last frontier foothold. The Nusra Front was al Qaeda’s Syria branch until it severed ties and rebranded last year. It now spearheads the Tahrir al-Sham Islamist alliance in the Syrian war.

The Lebanese army, which receives considerable U.S. and British military support, did not take an active part in the operation, setting up defensive positions around Arsal. The next phase is expected to target a nearby enclave currently in the hands of Islamic State jihadists.

BODIES OF FIGHTERS EXCHANGED

“Buses that will transport Nusra Front militants and their families have started arriving in Jroud Arsal,” the military media unit run by the Iran-backed Hezbollah said via social media on Monday. The convoys rolled in from Syria and headed towards Lebanese army positions. Syrian Red Crescent ambulances arrived on the opposite side of the frontier, the media unit said. Footage from the border zone showed dozens of white buses driving through the barren hills. The Lebanese Red Cross has taken part in logistics. The first step of the ceasefire, brokered by Lebanon’s internal security agency, unfolded on Sunday as the two sides exchanged the bodies of dead fighters. A Lebanese security source said 200 militants with hundreds of their family members, as well as more than 5,000 refugees, were due to leave, mostly towards insurgent-held Idlib. Nusra Front will release eight Hezbollah fighters under the deal, three captured in recent days and five held in Syria, a Lebanese security source said. Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV said the two sides would swap Nusra militants for the Hezbollah hostages near the city of Aleppo, which the Syrian government controls.

The U.N. refugee agency, not involved in the deal, was trying to reach refugees in the Arsal region to evaluate whether returns were voluntary, spokeswoman Lisa Abou Khaled said. “UNHCR believes that conditions for refugees to return in safety and dignity are not yet in place in Syria,” she said, with war continuing across large swathes of the country. The multi-sided Syrian conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven at least 11 million from their homes – about half Syria’s pre-war population. Nearly 1.5 million refugees have poured into Lebanon – around a quarter of its population – where most languish in severe poverty. Several thousand live in makeshift camps east of Arsal. 

George and Amal Clooney said on Monday they would help 3,000 Syrian refugee children go to school this year in Lebanon, where the United Nations says 200,000 children are not receiving an education after fleeing the war in neighboring Syria.

The Clooney Foundation for Justice said it has teamed up with Google and HP Inc to help the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF and the Lebanese Ministry of Education open seven so-called “second shift” schools for Syrian refugee children.

Lebanon has more than 1 million Syrian refugees, including nearly 500,000 children. It is educating Syrian children in public schools through a “second shift” system of additional afternoon classes exclusively for them.

“We don’t want to lose an entire generation because they had the bad luck of being born in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Oscar-winning actor George Clooney and international human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, who gave birth to twins last month.

“Thousands of young Syrian refugees are at risk – the risk of never being a productive part of society,” the couple said in a statement. “Formal education can help change that.”

A $3.25 million donation from the Clooney Foundation for Justice, Google and HP will pay for transportation, school supplies, computers, content, curriculum and teacher training.

A spokesman for the Clooneys’ foundation, Max Gleischman, said the organization had decided to support education for Syrian refugees through the public school system, instead of investing in private schools operated by SABIS, an international company which has prepared students for college and high school exams.

The foundation had announced last year that it would work to enroll thousands of children in SABIS schools.

A crackdown by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on pro-democracy protesters in 2011 led to civil war, and Islamic State militants used the chaos to seize territory in Syria and Iraq. Half of Syria’s 22 million people have been uprooted and more than 400,000 killed.