by AFP —  “No to Hezbollah, no to its weapons,” said a sign held up by Sana, a female protester from Nabatiyeh, a city in southern Lebanese, a Hezbollah stronghold. “Weapons should be only in the hands of the army,” said the 57-year-old. Supporters and opponents of Hebzollah threw stones at each other, prompting the army to intervene by forming a human chain to separate them, an AFP photographer said. Supporters of Hezbollah, which is also represented in the government and parliament, chanted: “Shi’ite, Shi’ite.” Security forces also fired teargas near a street leading into the parliament building behind Martyrs Square, after some demonstrators pelted them with stones and ransacked shops in the area.

by aljazeera.com — by Timour Azhari — Beirut, Lebanon – Thousands of anti-government protesters filled a main square in downtown Beirut to voice their discontent at the slow pace of reforms in the crisis-hit country. The peaceful demonstration – the largest in some three months after the country eased a nationwide lockdown aimed at stemming the spread of COVID-19 – devolved into clashes between protesters, counter-protesters and security forces. The Lebanese Red Cross said 37 protesters had been injured, of which 11 were taken to hospitals for treatment.

Demonstrations have been taking place in Lebanon since October, when more than a million people burst onto the streets to demand a solution to the ailing economy, an end to rampant corruption and the downfall of civil war-era politicians. “We had a small break during coronavirus [lockdown], but we’re back,” Mario Sawaya, a 65-year-old retiree, told Al Jazeera from Beirut’s Martyr’s Square. He said the government of Hassan Diab, which gained confidence in February after protesters toppled the government of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, had failed to show it could take strong independent decisions. “I don’t think they’re humans, because humans are defined by a conscience and values. They do not have any of that. This isn’t a government, it’s a zoo,” Sawaya said. Saturday’s protest saw a more mixed crowd than previous demonstrations, after former governing parties, with a majority-Christian support base that now finds itself in the opposition, called on their supporters to participate. Some called for the removal of the arsenal of Shia Hezbollah, a powerful Iran-backed militia and political force.

Most protest groups have pushed back, focusing on immediate reform – such as a new electoral law that reverses deep gerrymandering and the independence of the country’s judiciary – before tackling such divisive issues. Clashes ensued when dozens of counter-protesters, who support Hezbollah and its main Shia ally the Amal Movement, emerged from a neighbourhood near Martyr’s Square and shouted sectarian slogans. Hundreds of protesters ran towards them and hurled rocks and sticks at thick lines of riot police and soldiers. The protesters were pushed back but they clashed with security forces for several hours. Protesters set fires on main roads and at one point destroyed police motorbikes and set one alight.

They were eventually dispersed with large amounts of tear gas. Later, men from the neighbouring Chiyah and Ain al-Remanneh neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Beirut – majority-Shia and majority-Christian areas, respectively – clashed across a street that formerly divided Christian east and Muslim west Beirut during the country’s 15-year civil war. Some protesters fear that the uprising’s secular goals are in jeopardy as sectarian undertones come to the fore and living conditions deteriorate.

Prominent opposition groups like Li Haqqi have continued to push for concrete, universal demands. A banner raised by activists at the protest read: “Work, health, food, housing for all.” “We still haven’t really changed anything, but it’s either this or we die of hunger,” Camille Attar, a 19-year-old protester studying finance at a local university, told Al Jazeera as he escaped a wave of tear gas on the main north-bound highway outside Beirut. “There’s a lot of anger, there’s a lot of letting off steam, but the reality is that I don’t see a future for myself here.”

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Hundreds of Lebanese protesters took to the streets on Saturday to voice outrage over the government’s handling of a deep economic crisis, with security forces firing tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse rock-throwing demonstrators. The first big protests since the government rolled back coronavirus lockdown measures come as Beirut negotiates an International Monetary Fund package it hopes will secure billions of dollars in financing to prop up its collapsing economy. Protesters burned garbage bins and ransacked a furniture shop in the capital’s upscale shopping district, smashing its storefront and hauling out a couch to block a road. Security forces responded by firing rounds of tear gas, footage from Lebanese broadcasters showed.

Sectarian tensions appeared to flare even as the protests died down, with gunfire heard in some Beirut neighbourhoods and a tense standoff in a Christian-Shi’ite area associated with the start of the country’s 1975-1990 civil war, prompting security forces to deploy in large numbers, according to Lebanese media. Political and religious leaders across sectarian lines warned against the danger of sectarian violence. “The Prime Minister condemns and denounces in the strongest terms, all sectarian slogans … and calls on all Lebanese and their political and spiritual leaders to exercise awareness and wisdom and cooperate with the army and security services,” Prime Minister Hassan Diab wrote on Twitter. Among the demands of some protesters on Saturday was the disarming of powerful Shi’ite paramilitary group Hezbollah. “As long as there are militias that are stronger than the state, then it (the government) will not be able to fight corruption,” said John Moukarzel, a real estate company owner.

Diab took office in January with the support of the Iran-backed Hezbollah and its allies after the previous government was toppled by the protests that erupted last October. Lebanon’s economic woes have reached new depths in recent months. The pound currency has lost more than half of its value on the parallel market, prices have soared, and companies dealing with the double blow of the coronavirus have axed jobs. “You can sense that everyone is tired and the situation is very hard, especially the economy, so you can sense that people no longer want to be festive (in their protests). People are just angry,” said protester Marie-nour Hojaimy, a lawyer. Additional reporting by Ayat Basma; Writing by Eric Knecht; Editing by Helen Popper and Daniel Wallis Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.