WOMEN marched on the scene of last year’s devastating explosion in Beirut on the eve of Lebanon’s Mother’s Day on Saturday night.

The demonstration included mothers of victims of the August 4 blast, when 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate fertiliser that had been unsafely stored for six years in a warehouse ignited, killing 211 people and injuring more than 6,000.

Banners called on the political elite to surrender power. “The scream of every mother is ‘leave’,” one read. Another was inscribed: “We raised them inch by inch and you blew them up. Leave.”