The anger of the Lebanese rekindled by a fire in the port of Beirut
The fire had lowered in intensity Thursday evening, but it was still not extinguished after several hours of joint operations of civil defense and army helicopters.
AP Photo / Hussein Malla
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
Bruised by the double explosion of August 4 which left 192 dead, more than 6,500 injured and thousands of homeless, Beirut was struck Thursday by a huge fire that devastated the free zone of the port.
Enough to further widen the gap between the population and the leaders, once again accused of negligence, incompetence and irresponsibility.
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With our correspondent in Beirut,
Paul Khalifeh
The fire had subsided in the evening Thursday, but it was still not extinguished after several hours of joint civil defense and army helicopter operations.
And whatever the causes of
this fire
, many Lebanese no longer want to grant mitigating circumstances to their leaders.
Yet the President of the Republic Michel Aoun, who crystallizes part of the anger of the population on his person, reacted fairly quickly.
He summoned the Superior Council of Defense in the early evening, ordered an investigation and demanded a reorganization of the management of the port.
The flames destroyed thousands of food packages and half a million liters of oil stored by the Red Cross and intended for the affected populations.
Rumors
But people no longer trust.
They let their anger explode on social networks where all kinds of rumors have circulated.
The Druze leader Walid Joumblatt denounced on Twitter a "
criminal administration
", which he accused of having wanted "to
burn the evidence to escape punishment
".
Independent MP Neemat Frem, who resigned a few days after the August 4 disaster, said "
if the fire was started, it was to hide something and prevent investigators from carrying out analyzes to gather more evidence
" .
Voices were once again raised in the political class and the population to demand an international investigation, rejected by the authorities.
Thursday's fire further discredits an already very weakened power, which is struggling to form a government, while the 15-day deadline agreed with Emmanuel Macron to complete this process is coming to an end.
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Lebanon
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Lebanon: huge fire in the port of Beirut, a month after the explosion