Over 47 Hurt in Tripoli Night Clashes as Petrol Bombs Hurled at BDL in Sidon

After a few hours of calm in Tripoli on Tuesday evening, protesters again hit the streets, vandalizing the facade of a bank in the al-Mina district.

A demonstration was also held outside the home of former prime minister Najib Miqati, who has been accused of wrongly receiving millions in subsidized housing loans -- charges he denies.

Medics said over 47 people were injured in the Tuesday night clashes, including four soldiers. Only five needed hospitalization.

One protester had been killed and 60 people, including some 40 soldiers, had been injured during clashes on Monday night.

In the capital Beirut, dozens of protesters chanted slogans against the governor of the central bank in the Hamra area on Tuesday night.

In the southern city of Sidon, demonstrators threw several Molotov cocktails at the central bank's local headquarters.

Lebanon is mired in its worst economic crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.

The Lebanese pound has lost more than half of its value against the dollar on the black market, hitting record lows of 4,000 pounds to the dollar this week.

Economy Minister Raoul Nehme on Tuesday said that prices have risen by 55 percent, while the government estimates that 45 percent of the population now lives below the poverty line.

This has unleashed a public outcry against a government that has yet to deliver a long-awaited rescue plan to shore up the country's finances more than three months since it was nominated to address the crisis.

On Tuesday evening, Finance Minister Ghazi Wazni tweeted that his French counterpart Bruno Le Maire had given his backing to a rescue plan, but had stressed the need for long-overdue structural reforms.

- 'Social explosion' -

Lebanon's economic crisis has forced large chunks of the population into unemployment.

Meanwhile, a kilo of meat -- which used to sell for 18,000 Lebanese pounds ($12 at the official rate) -- now costs 32,000 (around $22), while the price of vegetables has doubled.

With no clear government plan to exit the crisis, Lebanon is heading "towards an inevitable social explosion," Sami Nader, director of the Levant Institute for Strategic Affairs, told AFP.

Public anger has been increasingly directed at banks, accused by protesters of helping a corrupt political class drive the country towards bankruptcy.

Lebanese banks, many of them owned by prominent politicians, have since September imposed restrictions on dollar withdrawals and transfers, forcing the public to deal in the nose-diving Lebanese pound.

Since March, banks have stopped dollar withdrawals altogether, further fueling public anger.