© AP Photo / Hussein Malla
The explosion in Lebanon
Finnish UN employee Cecilia Pellosniemi says on Facebook that she was injured in the Beirut explosion in Lebanon.
Pellosniemi says Yle News had been at home in the shower at the time of the accident just a few hundred meters from the blast site.
He heard a smaller explosion and knew he had to react to it. He was getting dressed when a bigger explosion struck and the building collapsed on him.
Pellosniemi says in his Facebook post that he still managed to walk to another district to seek help while giving himself first aid.
– A piece had actually left my forehead, he writes.
– It looked really bad when I saw myself in a broken mirror, Pellosniemi tells Yle Uutis.
He had received a serious wound to his head, so he tied a sheet around his head. Pellosniemi says in his publication that he received hospital treatment and is now recovering in hospital.
“My heart is broken”
He says he is grateful for his survival after seeing deaths and chaos in the streets after the explosion.
– But my heart is also broken, because Lebanon has faced a new tragedy again, Pellosniemi writes.
An explosion in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, last night killed more than 100 people and nearly 4,000 are known to have been injured. The wounded are still being searched for in the ruins of buildings that have collapsed by the force of the explosion.
At least 300,000 people have been left homeless and the Lebanese government has declared a state of emergency.