Trash Crisis Flames Lebanon

Local Editor

About 500 protesters blocked a major highway linking Beirut with south Lebanon for a second day Monday, triggering clashes with security forces that left three activists and four riot police officers wounded.

A security source said protesters tossed stones at police, wounding four members of the Internal Security Forces.

Security forces managed to reopen the highway for a few minutes around 6 a.m., after which protesters brought in trucks and dumped sand into the road. Other demonstrators burned tires to cut off the road, while another group set up tents.
About three hours later, the Lebanese Army and Internal Security Forces [ISF] brought in reinforcements.

Police had diverted traffic Sunday to the old seaside road in an attempt to bypass the protests. The continuing diversion caused huge traffic jams in both directions Monday.
Motorists spent nearly four hours on the road Sunday due to the closure.

On the political level, Prime Minister Tammam Salam described the country's waste crisis as a "national disaster," warning that street protests could spiral out of control and lead to detrimental effects.
"We are facing a national disaster that is much more dangerous than some [people] imagine," Salam told as-Safir daily in remarks published on Monday.

He warned that intensified street protests "would have very harmful circumstances."
Salam said that the country can no longer tolerate "intense crises because the situation in the region is different and the status-quo has changed."

The PM told as-Safir, however, that a solution to the crisis was looming in the horizon.
Salam headed on Sunday night a meeting that was attended by Ministers Nouhad al-Mashnouq, Mohammed al-Mashnouq, Akram Shehayyeb and Wael Abou Faour and MP Alaeddine Terro at the Grand Serail.

Sukleen, the company in charge of collecting trash from Beirut and Mount Lebanon, stopped working after the closure of the controversial Naameh landfill.

Mountains of garbage have piled up in and around Beirut since then, with politicians unable to find another site to dump the trash.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team