Lebanon mourns victims of Beirut blast, even as more dead are found

“I will keep on waiting because I know that Joe Akiki is strong, Joe Akiki is a hero,” she told MTV, a Lebanese broadcaster. “Joe Akiki has been through worse things and has been able, with the help of God, to overcome them.”

She decried Lebanon’s politicians, saying their children would be home by now. Akiki had taken the job, she said, to pay off university fees. He had wanted to leave Lebanon, but she had told him to stay and “water the cedar trees” — the country’s symbol.

The explosions left at least 154 people dead and thousands injured. Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab said they were caused by the ignition of 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer and bombmaking ingredient, improperly stored since 2014.

As bodies continue to be pulled from rubble and identified at morgues, the country grieves for and has begun to memorialize the departed.

There are the 10 firefighters who snapped a group photo before heading to extinguish the first of the flames at the port, only to be engulfed in the explosions that followed.

Across the country of about 5 million, some bereaved families are burying their loved ones. Others continue frantic searches for the missing. Some, as Akiki’s mother did, hold on to hope that their son or daughter will turn up alive, even as the chances dim.

Adding to the trauma, residents have taken on much of the cleanup themselves, expecting little support for rebuilding from their cash-strapped and indebted government.

“Today we are distraught and lost for words, but we are also angry and furious at the monsters responsible for this unfathomable madness!” wrote one grieving family member in a tribute on Facebook.

Fares was part of the brigade that answered the initial call on Tuesday about a fire at the port. She lived a short but ambitious life, rising from modest means to be one of the few women in the Beirut Fire Brigade, the New York Times reported.

She had found love in her fiance, Gilbert Karaan, whom she was set to marry next summer. Instead, a heartbroken Karaan marched alongside Fares’s coffin Thursday as a wedding band played at the funeral procession.

“Everything you wanted will be present except you in a white wedding dress,” Karaan wrote in a tribute on Instagram. “Life has no taste now that you’re gone.”

Linah Mohammad contributed to this report.