Al-Jazeera correspondent in Lebanon stated that the clashes renewed between the riot police and the Parliament’s police, and between groups of the popular movement who were protesting near Parliament in central Beirut late at night, to demand the formation of a national rescue government from specialists away from the party forces.
The security forces threw tear gas canisters to disperse the protesters and expel them from the vicinity of Parliament and the streets leading to it.
The confrontations had started early Saturday evening, and resulted in more than fifty protesters with fainting cases and separate fractures, according to the Red Cross and Civil Defense.
The Internal Security Forces said that twenty of them were taken to hospitals for treatment as a result of being stoned. The security forces initially managed to break the sit-in in the vicinity of Parliament, but groups of protesters returned to the area at a later time.
The new protests near the parliament come in the context of the popular movement that Lebanon has been witnessing since last October 17 to demand the departure of the political elite, who led the country towards the worst economic crisis in decades.
After the Harak pushed Saad Hariri's government to resign in late October, talks between the main party forces on forming a new government went to a dead end.