Demonstration turns into street battles in Beirut’s latest tragedy
A political protest in Beirut turned into a bloody battle in which at least six people were killed on Thursday.
Supporters of the Iran-backed group Hezbollah and the Amal movement, a Shiite political party, gathered outside the Lebanese capital’s Palace of Justice to protest against an arrest warrant issued by the judge leading the investigation into the Beirut port blast.
Before the protest could begin, they were fired on by snipers, said Lebanon’s Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi.
In the armed clashes that followed, at least six people were killed and dozens injured.
The investigation into the chemical explosion at Beirut port on August 4, 2020, which killed at least 215 people, has become steeped in politics.
Parties react with fury if the finger of blame appears to be pointing their way. They are protecting political and financial interests built up over decades, and all want to avoid being held responsible for the national tragedy.
In their desperation to avoid being held to account over the blast, parties have tried everything, from threatening those leading the probe to hiding behind immunities offered by their memberships of parliament and the country’s powerful unions.
Political pressure led to the removal of the original investigating judge, Fadi Sawan, after he indicted two former ministers. He was replaced by Tarek Bitar.
In recent weeks, Mr Bitar has been battling to avoid the same fate as his predecessor, after issuing arrest warrants and indictments against several high-profile politicians.
The involvement in the case of one politician in particular appears to have led to Thursday’s clashes in Beirut. Mr Bitar first summoned Ali Khalil for questioning in late September, along with two others.
Mr Khalil, the former finance minister, is a close ally of Amal leader and Speaker of parliament Nabih Berri, and has been described as the group’s “number two”.
A Human Rights Watch investigation found that Mr Khalil was aware of the deadly nature of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, which caught fire and exploded, devastating the city.
Mr Khalil has previously been placed under sanctions by the US government for providing material support to Hezbollah.
Mr Bitar has so far remained steadfast in the face of threats from Amal and Hezbollah. He faced perhaps his greatest public criticism this week, when Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah publicly rebuked him in a televised address, accusing him of “politicising” the investigation.
Tensions were high before Thursday’s armed clashes.
Lebanon’s parties fought a civil war between 1975 and 1990 and gun ownership remains widespread.
The war was eventually bought to an end by the Taif agreement, or National Reconciliation Accord, signed in Saudi Arabia in 1989.
The agreement paved the way for the demobilisation of the country’s militias by offering a pathway to political representation in exchange for them standing down their armies.
Yet it allowed Hezbollah to keep its weapons, on the grounds that the group was waging a campaign of national resistance against Israeli troops who occupied the country’s south until 2000.
Even after the Israeli withdrawal, Hezbollah held on to its weapons, maintaining a military force that is widely seen as stronger than the Lebanese Army, and that has been sent in recent years to fight in Syria in support of the regime of Bashar Al Assad.
Amal officially disarmed after Taif. But along with many of Lebanon’s other parties, it is believed to have secretly kept some weapons.
Amal and Hezbollah are the country’s two dominant Shiite political forces, though the two used to be one.
Hezbollah split from Amal during the civil war, the schism leading to a bloody rivalry that became known as the War of Brothers.
There is now an uneasy coexistence and on Thursday they were united against the snipers.
They accuse the Lebanese Forces, a rival Christian party which is vehemently anti-Hezbollah, of launching the attack.
Thursday’s clashes have reignited fighting along some of Beirut’s old front lines from the civil war.
The Tayouneh neighbourhood, where Amal fighters were filmed firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles, is a Shiite district separated from the Christian area of Badaro and Achrafieh by Sami El Solh Road.
The division closely traces the Green Line that divided Christian East Beirut from the largely Muslim West Beirut during the civil war.
There has been an uneasy coexistence between Hezbollah and Amal, but on Thursday both fought the snipers