Angry Lebanese promise to continue with protests
Print Edition
LEBANESE protesters enraged by official negligence blamed for Beirut’s enormous and deadly explosion vowed yesterday to rally again after a night of street clashes in which they stormed several ministries.
“Prepare the gallows because our anger doesn’t end in one day,” warned one message circulating on social media in response to Tuesday’s earthquake-strength blast of a huge pile of industrial chemicals.
The calls for renewed protests came as French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris was to oversee a UN-backed virtual donors conference to raise aid for Lebanon, a country mired in a painful economic crisis.
In Beirut, the fury on the streets has further shaken the embattled government of Prime Minister Hassan Diab, which saw its first Cabinet resignation when the information minister, Manal Abdel Samad, quit yesterday.
“After the enormous Beirut catastrophe, I announce my resignation from government,” she said, apologizing to citizens for having failed them.
At least six lawmakers have also quit since the August 4 explosion.
The revelation that Lebanese state officials had long tolerated a ticking time-bomb in the heart of the capital has served as shocking proof to many Lebanese of the rot at the core of the state apparatus.
The death toll from the explosion of a long-neglected pile of ammonium nitrate stood at 158 people, with 60 still reported missing, and a staggering 6,000 wounded, many by flying glass as the shockwave tore through the city.
The blast, whose mushroom cloud reminded many of an atomic bomb, left a 43-meter deep crater at Beirut’s port, said a security official citing French experts working in the disaster area.
The mood was one of grief and fury in Beirut, a day after many of the dead were laid to rest and when thousands demonstrated in the biggest anti-government rally the country has seen in months. The country’s worst peace-time disaster has reignited a protest movement against the reviled ruling elite that first flared last October but had then faded amid economic hardship and the coronavirus pandemic.
As tensions have again escalated, the army on Saturday used teargas and rubber bullets to clear hundreds of protesters from the central Martyr’s Square. The street violence left 65 people injured, according to the Red Cross, with footage circulating online showing some demonstrators having sustained severe injuries.
In a new tactic, demonstrators temporarily occupied the foreign ministry building before being forced out by the army three hours later.
Protesters, some brandishing nooses, also stormed the economy and energy ministries and the Association of Banks, widely hated for cash shortages and asset freezes, before they were pushed back out by soldiers.
Rescuers meanwhile kept digging through the rubble of toppled buildings as hopes slowly faded of finding more survivors from the colossal blast that shook the country and was felt as far away as Cyprus.
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