Protests are expected in Beirut on Saturday amid growing anger at the corruption and incompetence that appears to have paved the way for one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions the world has ever seen.
Now the dust from the explosion has settled, the injured are being treated, professional rescue teams have taken over the grim search for survivors and remains, and cleanup operations are under way. Moreover, Beirut’s battered residents are demanding answers and accountability for their city’s tragedy.
Demonstrations are planned for Saturday afternoon, and there are fears violence could break out. On Thursday security forces fired teargas at a small crowd protesting against the political elite, some of them hurling stones.
There is growing anger against the country’s ruling elite, who were seen as corrupt and incompetent even before Wednesday’s tragedy. Over the last year they have presided over a rapid economic collapse that cratered the value of the national currency and destroyed citizens’ life savings virtually overnight.
Lebanon’s president, Michel Aoun, vowed on Friday that all officials responsible for the explosion would be brought to justice regardless of their positions.
Yet few in Beirut have any confidence that a government that allowed an enormous stockpile of deadly explosive to sit for years in flimsy sheds in the heart of Beirut can be trusted to investigate the accident.
In one sign of disgust with the entire political class, one of the country’s leading broadcasters, LBC, announced it would no longer broadcast any political speeches or statements by leaders about a promised probe into the catastrophe.
The unprecedented boycott of Lebanese leaders and officials meant neither speeches by Aoun, or the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, were broadcast on LBC on Friday.
France called for an international inquiry into the catastrophe, already regarded as one of the biggest industrial accidents in history.
The site of the explosion is also likely to exacerbate its economic impact, and hamper reconstruction, because it destroyed Lebanon’s only functional grain silos and dramatically limited its ability to receive imports by sea.
But Aoun has already rejected widespread calls for an international probe, telling a reporter he saw it as an attempt to “dilute the truth”. He also suggested that “foreign interference” may have been to blame – something many Lebanese see as laying the groundwork for powerful players to avoid justice.
