Beirut explosion: Lebanese security fires tear gas at protesters as fury mounts

Lebanese security forces fired tear gas at protesters on Thursday night amid mounting outrage at political leadership blamed for the massive explosion that laid waste to large areas of Beirut.

Several people were wounded in clashes between demonstrators and security forces near the parliament building in downtown Beirut, state-run National News Agency said.

Officers fired tear gas after protesters threw stones at security forces, lit fires and vandalised nearby buildings, NNA reported.

Early analysis suggested that 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored at the port had caught fire, causing the blast. But on Friday Lebanese President Michel Aoun suggested it was caused either by negligence or a missile attack.

It could have been "negligence or foreign interference through a missile or bomb," the president said in a televised interview, rejecting calls for an international investigation.

Public anger at the disaster at which over 150 people died and more than 5,000 were injured has continued to grow, with Lebanese repeating demands from nationwide protests last year for the entire government to resign.

So far only one member of parliament and the ambassador to Jordan have quit in response to the blast, which many Lebanese say is the result of decades of corruption and mismanagement.

Offering her resignation in a televised address on Thursday, Lebanon’s ambassador to Jordan blamed the disaster on a corrupt political elite in power since the 1975-1990 civil war, who she said must resign.

"They all must go," Tracy Chamoun said. "This is total negligence."

International leaders are also calling for widespread reform of Lebanon’s governance system.

Visiting French President Emmanuel Macron told enraged Lebanese who mobbed him in Beirut on Thursday that international aid would not be passed to “corrupt hands”.

Surrounded by demonstrators clamouring for help to oust their reviled leadership, Mr Macron said he was not there to endorse the “regime” Mwould ask Lebanon's leaders to accept "a new political deal" and "to change the system”.

A rare nationwide protest movement began last October, sparked by an unpopular proposal to tax the WhatsApp messaging app. Demonstrators called for the overthrow of a political oligarchy they accused of enriching themselves while hollowing out the state, forcing the resignation of former prime minister Saad Hariri.

Further unrest is expected in the coming days as Lebanese activists have called for “Saturday of Revenge” protests in Beirut this weekend.

“We will hang the gallows,” one Instagram account with 42,000 followers wrote, accompanied by an image of a noose.

“We are anticipating tens of thousands of people to protest in Beirut and other cities in Lebanon on Saturday,” said Joel Gulhane, an analyst with the UK-based Risk Advisory Group.

“We are likely to see a return to the earlier days of the protest movement that began in October last year,” he said. “But the anger and devastation wrought by the explosion, coupled with the sharp decline in quality of life for many Lebanese, means that the upcoming period is likely to be more violent than before.”