The cabinet stepped down as fury over a giant explosion last week in Beirut spurred new protests.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanon’s cabinet resigned on Monday, opening up new political uncertainty as the country struggles with a crippling economic crisis and reels from an enormous explosion last week that ravaged swaths of the capital.
The resignation of the government reflected how deeply last week’s explosion — which killed more than 150 people, wounded 6,000 and left hundreds of thousands homeless — has rattled the small Mediterranean nation. Lebanon was already struggling with deep economic and political crises before the blast caused billions of dollars in damage to Beirut.
“We are taking a step back to stand with the people, to wage the battle for change with them,” said Prime Minister Hassan Diab, in a televised address. He blamed his political foes, without naming them, for thwarting his efforts to fix Lebanon’s problems.
In recent days, Beirut has been rocked by protests that have turned areas of downtown into battle zones between demonstrators and the security forces. Even before the announcement by Mr. Diab, who has been in office since January, new clashes had erupted as protesters sought to storm the Parliament.
Demonstrators wearing masks and goggles climbed up barricades near the Parliament and hurled stones at riot police officers, who fired volleys of tear gas that wafted through downtown for the third time in three days.
The protesters said Mr. Diab’s resignation fell far short of their demands for the ouster of the country’s political elite, many of whom gained prominence during Lebanon’s brutal 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990.
Hamad Hassan, Lebanon’s health minister, right, and Prime Minister Hassan Diab on Monday during a cabinet meeting in Beirut. Mohamed Azakir/Reuters
“The government resignation is not enough,” said one protester, Ahmed el-Mohamed, 27, whose head was wrapped in gauze and bleeding from the clashes. “We have to bring down the president and the speaker of Parliament. It’s a matter of days, and we’ll do it.”
Beirut has been shaken by other violent protests over the worsening economic crisis and what many consider decades of corruption and mismanagement. The local currency has lost much of its value, and unemployment and inflation rates have soared.
Those problems will hamper Lebanon’s ability to recover from the blast, and now it is unclear who will take charge of that process, which includes negotiating aid packages with potential donors and putting in place long-delayed reforms.
In his address, Mr. Diab cast himself on the side of the protesters and blamed chronic corruption for the country’s problems.
“I discovered that the system of corruption was bigger than the state and that the state is bound by this system, and that it is not possible to confront it or get rid of it,” he said.
Mr. Diab said he and his cabinet ministers found their efforts at an overhaul blocked at every turn by entrenched power brokers in the country’s government.
“They are the true tragedy of the Lebanese people,” Mr. Diab said. “We are going to step back to stand with the people, to wage the battle for change with them.”
Before Mr. Diab’s announcement, three of his 20 cabinet ministers had already resigned, as had at least seven members of the country’s 128-member Parliament. But those moves were not enough to either topple the government or prompt new elections.
Mr. Diab will continue in a caretaker capacity as the political parties represented in the Parliament consult with President Michel Aoun to choose a new prime minister.
But caretaker prime ministers usually lack the political backing to pursue significant initiatives, meaning that the Lebanese government could coast, or become even less responsive, until a new cabinet is in place. That could take many months.
Mr. Diab, an engineering professor and former minister of education, came to office with the backing of Hezbollah, the powerful militant group and political party, and its political allies after his predecessor, Saad Hariri, resigned in October.
Mr. Diab was widely seen as an inexperienced but ambitious outsider. Many of Lebanon’s problems were deeply entrenched before he took office, but he found few ways to slow the country’s decline.
The Port of Beirut, which was destroyed in an explosion on August 4. Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
In March, as the economy faltered, Lebanon defaulted on a $1.2 billion payment for foreign bonds for the first time in the country’s history. Mr. Diab’s government released a recovery plan on April 30 that said the economy was “in free fall,” and that Lebanon would seek $10 billion in aid from the International Monetary Fund. But multiple rounds of talks failed to reach an agreement and the aid never came.
The currency continued to slide, losing 80 percent of its value since last fall as many Lebanese lost jobs and shuttered businesses.
The economic crisis has continued to anger protesters convinced that nothing will fix the country short of far-reaching political change and the banishment of the very political leaders who helped Mr. Diab come to office.
“I have nothing to lose,” said Krystel El Khoury, a 24-year-old protester. “I just graduated. I’m an architect. I’m unemployed and I don’t have hope. Either we do this or we leave this country.”
Lebanese officials have said the blast occurred when a fire ignited 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, a chemical used to make fertilizer and bombs, which had been stored in the Beirut port since 2014, despite warnings from a number of officials that it was dangerous.
Many in Lebanon considered the blast the latest manifestation of poor governance that had also caused the economic crisis.
By Ben Hubbard/ The New York Times
