It seems the ammonium nitrate may actually have come on a ship that made an unscheduled stop at the Beirut port in 2013 because of technical difficulties.
Leftover chemicals developed for war such as ammonium nitrate for munitions and organophosphates for nerve gas became fertilizers and pesticides on the farm.
Laleh Khalili: Actually, the seafarers end up sitting on that ship for something like 10 months with all of that ammonium nitrate, essentially on a floating bomb.
Primary investigations into the blast revealed that the ammonium nitrate stored since 2014 in a warehouse at the port caused the explosions, which killed over 200 people and injured more than 6,000 others.
So in November 2013, an old rusty, worn-out ship called the MV Rhosus arrived at the port in downtown Beirut carrying about 2750 tons of this highly explosive fertilizer called ammonium nitrate.