Garbage and scrap metal are piled up in the al-Hadidiya camp in the Bekaa, where an accidental shell explosion killed two yesterday. (Credit: NNA)
Two sitting MPs implicated in the Beirut port blast probe have requested the dismissal of Beirut Court of Appeals’ head Judge Nassib Elia. Ghazi Zeaitar and Ali Hassan Khalil made their request after Elia dismissed their earlier petitions to remove the head of the port blast investigation, Judge Tarek Bitar. Both Zeaitar and Khalil have repeatedly used their parliamentary immunity and initiated assorted legal challenges to avoid appearing before Bitar for questioning in relation to the Aug. 4, 2020, explosion. The MPs’ latest move follows ongoing legal challenges to Bitar’s investigation. Last Wednesday, former Prime Minister Hassan Diab, who has also been summoned by Bitar, filed a lawsuit against the Lebanese state, arguing that Bitar does not have the jurisdiction to prosecute the former premier and that the power to do so lies with the Supreme Council. A day later, another MP the probe seeks to question, Nohad Machnouk, followed suit and filed a case against the Lebanese state. Zeaitar then filed a similar case, citing “grave mistakes” ascribed to Bitar. The cases have forced the postponement of any element of the probe involving the MPs. Today marks 15 months since the devastating Beirut port blast, which killed more than 218 people, injured over 6,500 and devastated whole neighborhoods of the capital. More than a year on from the tragedy, the investigation into it is mired by political opposition and has thus far failed to hold any top officials accountable.
Fuel and bread prices rose again yesterday. The Energy Ministry applied a roughly 3 percent increase on all kinds of fuel, while the Economy Ministry increased the price of small and large bread bundles by 5.26 percent and 4.94 percent, respectively. After the Energy Ministry announced the fuel price hike, taxi drivers held protests and blocked roads, including in Beirut’s Saifi area, as well as in Saida and Tripoli. The cost of 20 liters of 95-octane and 98-octane gasoline is now set at LL304,000 and LL313,400, respectively — close to half the country's official monthly minimum wage of LL675,000 — while the same quantity of diesel is now LL282,500. The demonstrations were also aimed at demanding the enforcement of fines against drivers offering taxi services without official authorization, head of the land transport unions Bassam Tlais told L'Orient Today.
The public administration employees’ association is set to begin an open-ended strike today. The association announced on Monday that it would strike over deterioration in the value of its members’ salaries amid the collapse of Lebanon’s national currency, which has lost more than 90 percent of its value, dramatically eroding the purchasing power of lira earners. In a statement, the association said “the strike will be an open-ended one if the decision-makers do not initiate solutions to our demands.” In June, the association went on a three-day strike to oppose a full-time return to office-based work on the grounds that employees could not afford the cost of transportation. With the effective ending of state subsidies on fuel, transportation costs have since spiraled. “The salaries of an employee in the public sector are no longer be sufficient meet even the minimum living requirement,” Nawal Nasr, head of the association told L’Orient Today yesterday evening, emphasizing that the strike will be “strict and open-ended as long as the authorities are not reacting to our demands and ignoring them.”
Two people were killed and three others injured when a shell accidentally exploded at an informal refugee settlement in the Baalbeck area. The two Syrian nationals died when the shell, which was among scrap they were collecting at the al-Hadidiya camp near Majdaloun, detonated, our correspondent in the area reported yesterday afternoon. In a similar incident last month, a 13-year-old boy died following the accidental explosion of a hand grenade in the Kaab al-Masnaa area of the town of Brital in Baalbeck. He had been collecting scrap metal with his father when he picked up the explosive.