This archive report was first published on 8 August 2020.
Protesters Seize Lebanon Foreign Ministry After Deadly Blast ¶
Thousands of protesters stormed the foreign ministry in Beirut, Lebanon, on Saturday, August 8, 2020, as anger exploded over a deadly blast that made hundreds of thousands homeless and shocked the world.
Beirut residents' grief had turned to anger since the blast on Tuesday, which levelled the city's port and killed 158 people. The blast was widely perceived as a direct consequence of corruption and incompetence, perhaps the most egregious case of callousness on the part of a ruling elite that was already reviled.
As security forces focused their attention on a tense demonstration a few hundred metres down the road, a group led by retired Lebanese army officers stormed the foreign ministry and declared it the 'headquarters of the revolution'. 'We are taking over the foreign ministry as a seat of the revolution,' Sami Rammah, a retired officer, announced by loudspeaker from the ministry's front steps.
Despite high tensions, fuelled by resentment among the demonstrators that security forces had not been deployed to help the public in the aftermath of the blast, the protest passed off relatively peacefully. A few hundred metres away, rescue teams from all over the world searched the rubble on as the chances of finding survivors slipped away.
The health ministry said 158 people were confirmed to have died in the disaster, while at least 6,000 were wounded and 21 still missing. The blast has prompted an impressive aid response from both inside and outside Lebanon, but demonstrators' chants and the mock gallows they set up in the street made it clear that people want heads to roll.
But some of Lebanon's leaders seemed to consider the outpouring of international solidarity as an opportunity to break the government's diplomatic isolation. A virtual international donor conference launched by French President Emmanuel Macron, with US President Donald Trump and other top leaders in attendance, is scheduled for Sunday.
