Lebanese protesters enraged by official negligence blamed for Beirut’s enormous and deadly explosion yesterday vowed 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,” said 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 already mired in a painful economic crisis.
Photo: EPA-EFE
In Beirut, the fury on the streets has further shaken the embattled government of Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab, which saw its first Cabinet resignation when Minister of Information 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.
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 yesterday stood at 158 people, with 60 still reported missing, and a 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 43m deep crater at Beirut’s port, a security official said, 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 army on Saturday used tear gas and rubber bullets to clear hundreds of protesters from the Martyr’s Square, once more the epicenter of Lebanon’s protest movement.
The street violence left 65 people injured, the Red Cross said.
Demonstrators temporarily occupied the Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Immigrants building before being forced out by the army three hours later.
Protesters, some brandishing nooses, also stormed the Lebanese Ministry of Economy and Trade, the Ministry of Energy and Water and the Association of Banks, before they were pushed out by soldiers.
Diab said on Saturday that he would propose early elections to break the impasse that is plunging the nation ever deeper into political and economic crisis.
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