Beirut blast: Missile may have been to blame, says Lebanon's president Michel Aoun

Lebanon’s president has suggested that a missile could have been responsible for the catastrophic Beirut blast, as the country’s entrenched ruling class comes under increasing pressure from enraged citizens to resign.

In a televised interview on Friday, Michel Aoun rejected calls for an international investigation into the disaster, which killed more than 150 people, saying it could have been caused by “negligence or foreign interference through a missile or bomb”.

Experts have discounted the missile theory, pointing out that a fire burning at the port warehouse before the explosion was sufficient to cause the detonation of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate that had been stored there.

Meanwhile, the head of Hizbollah denied that his powerful Shia militant group had stored arms at the port.

“We have nothing in the port: not an arms depot, nor a missile depot, nor missiles, nor rifles, nor bombs, nor bullets, nor nitrate,” Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech broadcast on Friday.

Their statements will do little to dissipate public anger, with demonstrations calling for the overthrow of the government expected to be held on Saturday, following clashes between protesters and security forces on Thursday.

Several people were injured in the clashes near the parliament building in downtown Beirut, where officers fired tear gas after protesters threw stones at security forces, lit fires and vandalised nearby buildings.

Five British medical professionals flew out on Friday to help, after more than 5,000 people were injured in the blast, the Department for International Development said.

“The UK is sending these world-leading medics to use their expertise and to make sure the people of Lebanon get the help they need as quickly as possible,” Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the International Development Secretary, said.

The UK Government also announced £3 million for the British Red Cross for medical and humanitarian assistance, in addition to an earlier pledge of £5 million.

But on the ground in Beirut, the failure of Lebanese leaders to take responsibility for the blast is enraging citizens, who have renewed calls advanced in nationwide protests last year for the entire government to resign.

So far, only one member of parliament and the ambassador to Jordan have quit in response to the blast, which many Lebanese say was the result of decades of corruption and mismanagement. Offering her resignation in a televised address on Thursday, Tracy Chamoun, who has served as ambassador since 2017, blamed the disaster on a corrupt political elite in power since the 1975-1990 civil war.

“They all must go,” Ms Chamoun said. “This is total negligence.”

International leaders are also calling for widespread reform of Lebanon’s governance system. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, told Lebanese citizens who mobbed him during his visit to Beirut on Thursday that international aid would not be passed into “corrupt hands”.

Surrounded by demonstrators clamouring for help to oust their reviled leadership, Mr Macron said he was not there to endorse the “regime” but would ask Lebanon’s leaders to accept “a new political deal” and “to change the system”.

A rare nationwide protest movement began last October, sparked by an unpopular proposal to tax the WhatsApp messaging app. Demonstrators called for the overthrow of a political oligarchy they accused of enriching itself while hollowing out the state, forcing Saad Hariri to step down as prime minister.

Further unrest is expected in the coming days as Lebanese activists have called for “Saturday of Revenge” protests in Beirut this weekend.

“We will hang the gallows,” read a message, accompanied by an image of a noose, on one Instagram account with 42,000 followers.

“We are anticipating tens of thousands of people to protest in Beirut and other cities in Lebanon on Saturday,” said Joel Gulhane, an analyst with the UK-based Risk Advisory Group.

“We are likely to see a return to the earlier days of the protest movement that began in October,” he added. “But the anger and devastation wrought by the explosion, coupled with the sharp decline in quality of life … means that the upcoming period is likely to be more violent than before.”