United Nations experts and top NGOs urged the U.N. Human Rights Council on Wednesday to launch an international investigation into the deadly Beirut port blast, on the eve of its two-year anniversary.

The August 4, 2020 mega-blast killed more than 200 people and destroyed swathes of the Lebanese capital, after a stockpile of haphazardly stored ammonium nitrate fertilizer caught fire at the port.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri expressed Wednesday his support for a national dialogue initiative suggested by Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.

Thousands of Iraqi protesters have been occupying the parliament in Baghdad's Green Zone for the past five days.

Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea said Wednesday that the next President should be sovereign and reformist, refusing a President from the March 8 Alliance or a consensual President.

"We will oppose with all our strength the election of a President from the March 8 Alliance," Geagea said in a press conference as he accused the so-called Axis of Defiance of being the root cause of the crisis.

Pope Francis marked the second anniversary of the Beirut port explosion by insisting Wednesday that truth and justice "can never be hidden," in an apparent reference to the stalled investigation into the disaster.

Francis made the comments at the end of his weekly general audience, the first after his month-long summer break.

The Free Patriotic Movement slammed Wednesday, in a statement, the obstruction of the Beirut blast probe by some politicians and judges and by the supreme court of Lebanon.

The statement also blamed Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati for failing to form a new cabinet, obstructing reforms and not taking the required steps to activate the investigation.

Marking the World Day against Trafficking in Persons (TiP) 2022, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) together with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Lebanon organized awareness raising sessions on trafficking in persons for more than 150 migrants from various communities.

The sessions were organized in collaboration with Caritas Lebanon and Legal Action Worldwide (LAW), L'Union Pour La Protection de L'Enfance Au Liban (UPEL) and KAFA (enough) Violence & Exploitation.

The first grain ship to depart Ukraine under a wartime deal entered the Bosporus Strait on the way to Lebanon after its cargo was checked and approved Wednesday, Turkish and Ukrainian authorities said.

An inspection team spent about 90 minutes conducting checks aboard the Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni, which was carrying Ukrainian corn and anchored off Istanbul, Turkey's defense ministry said.

Paul and Tracy Najjar have lived in grief since the massive explosion that tore through the Lebanese capital in 2020 killed their three-year-old daughter, and their anger boils over the stalled investigation.

The August 4 mega-blast, blamed on a fire that ignited tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer haphazardly stored for years at Beirut harbor, was one of the largest non-nuclear detonations ever recorded.

Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday said that after the return of U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein to Lebanon, the stances of the Lebanese state and Hezbollah were in harmony as to the “limited time” left to reach an agreement.

Five people were arrested on a Greek island Tuesday and charged with trying to smuggle nearly a hundred migrants into Europe on an unsafe vessel last week, using what appears to be a new direct sea route from crisis-afflicted Lebanon to Italy.

It was the second such incident in about a month involving a boat departing Lebanon. The more common sea route for asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa seeking a better life in Europe is from Turkey to Greece or Italy. But it has become less used amid increased vigilance by Greek and European Union border agencies.