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Nidal Ali, Islamic Relief’s country director for Lebanon, tells the BBC his charity has teams on the ground to assess the damage and help affected families.

They will provide those who have lost their homes with hot meals for the next two weeks, he said, and will offer medical supplies to hospitals.

Of the estimated 300,000 people who have been made homeless by the blast, he says some of them would have stayed with friends or family last night, while hotels and lodgings opened their doors to people in need.

"My flat was badly damaged - glass broken, doors smashed," he said.

"My wife and four-year-old daughter, we couldn’t stay in the flat, so we had to flee to my village."

Image source, AFP

The blast comes at a difficult time for Lebanon which is not only trying to curb the spread of the coronavirus but is also mired in an unprecedented economic crisis. The economic situation has pushed tens of thousands people into poverty and triggered large anti-government protests.

Read more on the situation in Lebanon here.

Ahmed Bayran, of the charity Save the Children, says that Lebanon's families were already fighting for survival, even before Tuesday's explosion.

A typical family, he says, may already be having to choose between getting milk for their baby and paying their energy bills.

Now, he says, they face another tough choice: "How to fix your home, how to fix your windows."

Added to this, he says, the potential for toxic air following the blast worries him.

"This is the last thing that Lebanon needs and I think it is time now that the international community, everyone, pulls together to look at the situation here," he told the BBC.

"It is time now to prioritise the babies, prioritise the children, prioritise those who have lost education... and now they have to live with the trauma of this, it's catastrophic."

"No words can describe the horror of the disaster that has hit Beirut last night, turning it to a disaster-stricken city," President Michel Aoun has said at a council of ministers meeting, Lebanon's National News Agency reports.

"We are determined to move on with the investigations and expose the circumstances of what happened as soon as possible, to hold the responsible and the negligent accountable, and to sanction them with the most severe punishment," he added.

The president paid tribute to the emergency services and to the civilians who had rushed to help in the aftermath of the blast.

Image source, Reuters

Public Health Minister Hamad Hassan said Lebanon's health sector was short of beds and lacked the equipment necessary to treat the injured and care for patients in critical condition.

He said that "a large number of children" had been rescued but added that he feared that the number of dead would rise further.

The minister said that the government was "trying, as best we can, to bridge the gap resulting from the economic blockade and the exacerbated economic and financial crisis, to which has been added this new test and scourge as a result of the explosion".

Lebanon's Supreme Defence Council said those found responsible for the explosion would face the "maximum punishment" possible.

The UK Foreign Office has said all of its embassy staff in Beirut are accounted for, but a "small number have sustained non-life-threatening injuries".

Where necessary they are receiving medical attention, a statement said.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the UK will offer support to those affected, including British nationals.

The explosion comes at a sensitive time for Lebanon. With Covid-19 infections on the rise, hospitals were already struggling to cope. Now, they are faced with treating thousands of injured people.

The country is also going through an economic crisis - the worst since the 1975-1990 civil war. Ordinary Lebanese people were already having to deal with daily power cuts, a lack of safe drinking water and limited public healthcare.

Add to this the fact Lebanon imports most of its food and, as we've reported, large quantities of grain stored in the port have been destroyed, prompting fears of widespread food insecurity to come.

President Aoun announced that the government would release 100 billion lira (£50.5m; $66m) of emergency funds but the impact of the blast on the economy is expected to be long-lasting.

The future of the port itself is in doubt due to the destruction caused and with many building and homes reduced to an uninhabitable mess of glass and debris many residents have been left homeless.

On top of all this, the blast happened close to the scene of a huge car bombing which killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. A verdict is due at a special court in the Netherlands in the trial of four men accused of orchestrating the attack on Mr Hariri.

Image source, Chadia Elmeouchi-Noum

Chadia Elmeouchi-Noum ran through shattered glass to save her husband, Anthony.

She had just been thrown across her bedroom in their home a few blocks from the port by the force of the blast when she realised he wasn't responding to her calls.

"There was glass everywhere and I was getting cut but I needed to get to him," she told the BBC.

"He wasn't answering me, and then I saw him lying on the floor, there was blood everywhere.

"He had a part of the window on his head and a wall frame on his legs.

"There was blood gushing from his head. I tried to stop it but it was pouring out.

"I screamed for help but there was so much chaos I thought no-one will hear me and he will die here - I have to do something."

She managed to enlist the help of the building's concierge to get him outside, where a stranger offered to drive her to hospital.

"The hospital was chaotic. There were people everywhere. We carried him into the hospital.

"A few minutes after we arrived with him they shut the emergency room and wouldn't allow any more people in.

"They tried to get me to leave as well but I hid in a cupboard.

"I didn't want go, I wanted to make sure he was seen to.

"Now he has had brain surgery and I am waiting outside the room where he is."

The wife of the Dutch ambassador has been seriously injured in the blast on Tuesday, the country's foreign office has said.

She has been admitted to hospital.

The Dutch embassy - which sits just south of the explosion site - has also sustained extensive damage, the spokesman said.

Pope Francis has sent this tweet out this morning:

Maha Yahya is director of the Carnegie Middle East Center. She says the ferocity of the blast meant she thought it had happened right outside her house.

The explosion has left as many as 300,000 people homeless, Beirut's governor has told AFP news agency.

Marwan Aboud added that the estimated cost of the explosion is somewhere between $3bn and $5bn (£2.2bn and £3.8bn), with damage spreading across half the city.

Photos from the city show entire streets which appear destroyed, while people have been sharing images from inside their homes which reveal shattered windows and blown out doors amid other damage.

The Economist's Middle East editor Gregg Calstrom has shared these pictures:

The Red Cross in Beirut has said that it is co-ordinating with the Lebanese health ministry to set up new morgues as hospitals have become so overwhelmed.

Rescue workers are continuing to dig through rubble in an attempt to find survivors, as well as recover bodies.

Many of those killed are believed to be people working at the port.

"We are still sweeping the area. There could still be victims. I hope not," George Kettani, the head of the Lebanese Red Cross, told reporters.

Lebanon's economy minister says the country has just enough grain reserves for "a bit less than a month" after the blast destroyed its main silo.

Raoul Nehme told news agency Reuters that the country needed at least three months' worth of grain stored for its food security.

However, there are ships on the way with more. Lebanon now faces the challenge of finding somewhere new to store it.

Image source, EPA

Lina Khatib, who leads the Middle East and North Africa Programmes at Chatham House in London, has questioned exactly why so much of a potentially explosive substance was being stored so close to residential neighbourhoods.

"Who needs 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate?" she asked. "It is known that this substance is used for making explosives and it is also known that Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed group, is often smuggling material like this into Lebanon through the port, so it is plausible that Hezbollah might have some sort of link to the ammonium nitrate that exploded at the port but, of course, it's too early to tell.

"But certainly this is not a normal circumstance. Lebanon's agriculture industry certainly had not been benefiting from tonnes of fertilizer sitting in a port for six years."

Tuesday's blast happened after a warehouse storing ammonium nitrate caught fire, exploding with such force it was felt 150 miles (240km) away on the island of Cyprus.

The substance had reportedly been seized from a ship seven years ago, and appears to have been held at the port ever since.

But what exactly is ammonium nitrate?

• Common industrial chemical used mainly as fertiliser in agriculture
• Also one of the main components in explosives used in mining
• Not explosive on its own, ignites only under the right circumstances
• When it explodes, it can release toxic gases including nitrogen oxides and ammonia gas
• Strict rules on how to store it safely: site has to be fire-proofed, and not have any drains, pipes or other channels in which ammonium nitrate could build up

When the explosion happened, just after 18:00 local time (15:00GMT) on Tuesday, our colleague Maryem Taoumi, a journalist with BBC Arabic, was in the BBC's Beirut office carrying out an interview via the internet.

Her recording shows the shocking moment the blast hit.

All BBC staff in Lebanon are safe and accounted for.

This compilation of videos posted online shows the impact of the blast on Tuesday afternoon.

Warning: You may find the footage distressing.

Welcome to our live coverage following the aftermath of Tuesday's devastating explosion in the port area of Beirut, Lebanon.

So far, at least 100 people have been confirmed to have died, with some 4,000 more sustaining injuries.

Emergency services continue to hunt for survivors amid the wreckage. Another 100 people are thought to be missing.

The explosion - which was caused by 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored unsafely in a warehouse, according to the country's president - destroyed the surrounding area and shattered windows across the city.

We will be bringing you the latest from Beirut here on the live page, or you can read our full story here.