The government called for a day of mourning after armed clashes, with gunmen using automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades on the streets of the capital, echoing the darkest era of the country’s 1975-90 civil war. Gun battles in a country already grappling with one of the world’s worst economic crises in the past 150 years have raised fears of a return to sectarian violence.
The violence began on Thursday at a protest organized by the two main Shia parties – Hezbollah and the Amal movement – calling for the removal of the chief justice probing last year’s major blast at the port of Beirut. Officials on both sides have suggested that the judge’s investigation is moving toward holding them responsible for the blast, which killed at least 215 people.
Lebanese army personnel guard the site where the deadly clash took place on Thursday. (AP)
Many protesters had weapons. It was unclear who fired the shots first, but the confrontation quickly escalated into heavy gunfire along the pre-civil war border separating Beirut’s Muslim and Christian regions.
Firing continued for hours and ambulances rushed to pick up the casualties. Snipers shot from buildings. The bullets entered the windows of the apartments in the area. Schools were evacuated and residents hid in shelters.
Two Shia groups said their demonstrators opened fire from snipers stationed on rooftops, accusing militias of Christian right-wing Lebanese forces of opening fire.
An injured man died of his wounds on Friday, raising the death toll to seven, the health ministry said. The dead included two Hezbollah fighters and 45-year-old Maryam Farhat, mother of five children. Farhat was shot with a sniper bullet as she sat near the balcony door of her second-floor apartment, her family said on Friday.
A man riddled with bullets stands on his balcony in the fierce clashes on Thursday. (AP)
Farhat’s mother-in-law Munira Hamdar said, “We started shouting, he was taken on a stretcher but he did not reach the hospital.” Since then she is living with her aunt.
“She’s five years old. How will she understand?” Hamdar asked. “My son’s family is ruined.”
Most of the fighting between residents of Beirut’s Tayouneh area was caused by glass blown off the streets in front of shops and apartment buildings. Armored personnel carriers stationed on the roads, and some road entrances were equipped with barbed wire. Many cars were damaged.
Tayouneh has a huge roundabout that separates Christian and Muslim neighborhoods. The roundabout did not have new pockmarked buildings next to the scorched buildings from the days of the Civil War.
Hezbollah and Amal were performing the last rites of their dead later on Friday.
Tensions over the port explosion have contributed to many of Lebanon’s troubles, including extended power blackouts due to currency collapse, hyperinflation, rising poverty and the energy crisis.
Supporters of a Shia group affiliated with Hezbollah help an injured accomplice during an armed clash during a protest in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyah, Lebanon on Thursday. (AP)
The investigation centers on hundreds of tonnes of ammonium nitrate, which was improperly stored in a port warehouse on August 4, 2020. The explosion killed at least 215 people, injured thousands and destroyed parts of the surrounding areas. It was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history and devastated a country already beset by political divisions and financial crisis.
Judge Tarek Bitter has issued an arrest warrant against Lebanon’s former finance minister, a senior member of the Amal movement and a close aide of Hezbollah. Betar has accused three other former senior government officials of willful murder and negligence that led to the blast.
Beitar was attacked for several days by officials from both Amal and Hezbollah, including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, accusing him of politicizing the investigation by blaming and calling on some officials and not others.
No Hezbollah official has been charged so far in the 14-month investigation.
Bitter is the second judge to lead the complex investigation. His predecessor was fired after legal challenges.
Ali Haider, a 23-year-old Shia supporter of the group that took part in Thursday’s protest, said nearby residents first started throwing stones, bottles and furniture, before snipers fired at protesters from two directions, killing people. . trapped in. in between.
“Many people were martyred on the spot,” Haider said. He said that some politicians want to lead the country into another civil war.
Echoing Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, he said Bitter was taking orders from “foreign embassies” and was working to eventually blame Hezbollah for the port blast.
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