Hani Abughazaleh and friends had been fishing off the coast of Beirut, Lebanon.
“We heard a few small explosions and saw white smoke rising above,” he told CNN.
CNN producer Beirut Ghazi Balkiz said the initial explosion occurred at 6:07 local time.
Abughazaleh started taking a video at 18:08 local time and seven seconds later the massive red explosion cloud appears. The sudden and intense explosion is so powerful that it forms a massive, visible shock wave in the air.
Watch the moment:
He said when the shock wave hit the group, they almost knocked her out of the boat.
“We saw a red plume coming up and people were panicking and wondering if it was some kind of deadly gas,” he said.
“Oh my God,” someone exclaims in the video.
Two more videos taken by Abughazaleh show the red cloud blinding above Beirut.
As the boat began to make its way back to the shore along the shore, the red cloud appeared to disperse and a red haze appeared in the sky.
“I drove home to fix the damage in my house and saw hundreds of injured people,” he said.
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