Sharjah 24 – AFP: As thousands of Lebanese stood solemnly facing Beirut port on Wednesday to honour lost relatives and friends, their minute of silence was soon followed by wailing sirens and revolutionary slogans.
Even as candles were being lit and the names of those killed by last year's monster blast read out, protesters a few hundred yards (metres) away tried to force a barrier leading to parliament.
Marches, concerts, prayers, protests, flags, vigils and statues: the cacophony that gripped central Beirut reflected how torn many were on the anniversary of Lebanon's worst peacetime tragedy.
While some remained haunted by the unfathomable loss and destruction that the August 4 port explosion wreaked last year, others saw their revolutionary fervour reignited.
The sun setting on the Mediterranean, a bright red shipwreck and the gutted grain silos whose gloomy silhouette has become an emblem of the wounded city provided a striking background for the official ceremony.
Victims' families sat on neat white plastic chairs, cradling pictures of their slain relatives, as Lebanon's Maronite patriarch conducted a mass shortly after 18:07 -- the exact time at which the explosion ripped through the city.
A far cry from the state funeral mood that cloaked the blast site and its surroundings, scenes reminiscent of an October 2019 protest movement that had kindled nationwide hope were playing out.
Bare-chested young men tried to scale a razor-wire-topped barrier blocking access to parliament, for many the seat of blame for the blast and the rest of the country's woes.
Baton-wielding security forces responded to stone-throwing with tear gas and pushed back dozens of protesters even as the Maronite patriarch, wearing his tall white mitre, continued his homily.
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