Angry Lebanese are planning a major protest in central Beirut on Saturday where they will pay respects to those killed in this week’s blast and renew calls to overthrow the country’s political system.
As the numbers of volunteers cleaning Beirut’s streets swelled, UN agencies called for urgent assistance for Lebanon, estimating the massive explosion at Beirut’s port had reduced hospital capacity by 500 beds and destroyed shipping containers loaded with thousands of pieces of personal protective equipment being imported to help fight Covid-19.
Unicef said the homes of about 100,000 children had been damaged, some so badly that they had become uninhabitable, along with 120 of the city’s schools. With the country’s only grain silo destroyed, the World Food Programme warned that “an already grim food security situation” would be exacerbated.
Notices were circulating online calling for a demonstration on Saturday afternoon in downtown Martyrs’ Square, which became a hub for anti-government protests last year that forced the resignation of Saad Hariri as prime minister but did little to dislodge the country’s post-civil war political arrangements.
On Thursday evening Lebanese police fired teargas to disperse protests near parliament. Few Lebanese politicians have toured the site of the disaster or met affected communities, and some of those who have done so were greeted by angry crowds.
Hundreds of young volunteers were scouring affected neighbourhoods on Friday, going apartment to apartment clearing glass and other debris. “We’re going to clean up the streets and visit people’s homes to help them,” said Nadia Akl, a Beirut woman on her way to the neighbourhoods shattered by Tuesday’s explosion, which has been attributed to a 2,750-tonne store of ammonium nitrate in a warehouse at the port.
Q&AWhat is ammonium nitrate, the chemical blamed for the blast in Beirut?
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Ammonium nitrate is a common industrial chemical used mainly for fertiliser because it is a good source of nitrogen for plants. It is also one of the main components in mining explosives.
It is not explosive on its own, rather it is an oxidiser, drawing oxygen to a fire – and therefore making it much more intense. However, it ignites only under the right circumstances, and these are difficult to achieve.
While ammonium nitrate can in fact put out a fire, if the chemical itself is contaminated, for example with oil, it becomes highly explosive.
She had received an invitation to Saturday’s protest but said more than street demonstrations were required. “We need to be more organised,” she said. “[The revolution] last year started as a leaderless movement, which was good, but now not having a leader or a group to guide us won’t take us anywhere without a plan.”
Lebanon has an intricate power-sharing system that divides the spoils of government between the country’s 18 recognised religious sects. This has helped to keep the peace since the end of the 1975-90 civil war, but critics say it encourages cronyism and discourages accountability, leading to disasters such as this week’s explosion.
In comments that were met with scepticism, the president, Michel Aoun, said on Friday there was still a possibility the blast was the result of a hostile act. “The cause has not been determined yet,” Aoun said. “There is a possibility of external interference through a rocket or bomb or other act.”
The state news agency NNA said 16 people had been taken into custody over the blast, reportedly including the port’s general manager, Hassan Koraytem. A government investigation is scheduled to report its findings to the national cabinet by Sunday.
The death toll is more than 150, and the Lebanese Red Cross says dozens more could still be buried or trapped under debris.
Some international rescuers complained on Friday of being held up by bureaucracy upon their arrival in Beirut, with a Dutch team voicing confusion in their local media at not being allowed to bring their tracker dogs to aid in the search for survivors.
Funerals were being held for some of the victims, including Sahar Fares, a firefighter who was among those dispatched to put out the blaze that preceded and may have set off the main explosion.
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Fares, 24, was engaged to be married. On Thursday, in her northern Lebanese village of al-Qaa, the ceremony went ahead anyway, with Fares’s white coffin carried by relatives next to her fiance in his marriage suit, to the joyous racket of a wedding band.
“You broke my back, o soul of mine, you broke my heart’s heart, with your disappearance the taste of life is gone,” her husband-to-be, Gilbert Karaan, wrote in a tribute on Instagram.
