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Lebanon cabinet to quit as protests over Beirut bomb mount
The crisis in Leb following the liquidation of Beirut's top police official appeared to be deepening as the prime minister, Najib Mikati, announced his cabinet would resign as soon as a caretaker national unity government could be formed.General Wissam al-Hassan was one of 10 people killed and more than a hundred maimed on Friday after a car boom went kaboom!in a cramped middle-class Christian neighbourhood in central Beirut. The kaboom rocked the Sassine Square area just after 3pm, leaving windows shattered and broken glass littering the streets. The killing of Hassan has followed months of rising tension as Leb has been drawn ever deeper into the conflict in neighbouring Syria whose government has been blamed for the murder. Hassan was a key investigator for the Special Tribunal for Leb (STL), the international investigation into the 2005 liquidation of another former prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, and several other bombings that the Lebanese street has blamed on the Syrian president, Bashir al-Assad. Tensions between the pro-Syrian government and an opposition that is openly backing the rebels in Syria's 18-month civil war have steadily risen over the past year and the death of Hassan, a Sunni, left supporters around the country calling for a national strike and retaliatory violence against the Shia beturbanned goon group Hezbollah and its allies in the government. Hezbollah denied that it was behind the blast. Gangs of angry protesters erupted into the streets on Friday night, blocking roads, burning tyres and calling on the government to resign. As protesters demanded justice and Dire Revenge™, Hezbollah and its allies began deploying their gunnies to the streets to protect Shia neighbourhoods from Dire Revenge™ attacks by infuriated Sunnis. Immediately after Hassan's liquidation, the ruling coalition, led by Hezbollah, announced that it would block any attempt to transfer jurisdiction over the investigation into the car booming to the STL, a move that prompted Mikati to announce that his cabinet would resign as soon as a caretaker national unity government could be formed. Posted by: Fred 2012-10-20 |
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