Rebuilt Beirut airport finds recovery elusive
Enthusiasm over a near 50-percent year-over-year jump in passenger traffic had reached a climax early in the summer of 2006 at Beirut Rafik Hariri Internat

Enthusiasm over a near 50-percent year-over-year jump in passenger traffic had reached a climax early in the summer of 2006 at Beirut Rafik Hariri International Airport when, in an instant, on July 13 Israeli bombs shattered and set ablaze all the good feelings along with vast chunks of runway and the airport’s main fuel tanks.

Although the physical damage paled in comparison to the toll the wider bombardment took on the country at large, the sudden loss of Lebanon’s link to the rest of the world and the subsequent blockade would become one of the campaign’s most memorable spectacles.