Before noon Sunday, some 50 people, using vehicles and dumpsters, blocked the road near Fantasy World in Bir Hassan, in Beirut’s southern suburbs. The gathering of women, men and children were demonstrating against the crackdown by security forces on illegal construction on public property. 

The Lebanese Army arrived on the scene soon after and reopened the road, dispersing the protesters without any incident.

Caretaker Interior Minister has blamed a lack of state authority on the rise of illegal constructions in the country and vowed to carry on with a crackdown on the illegal practice.

Lebanon has been without a functional government for over four months after Hezbollah-backed March 8 ministers resigned from Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s Cabinet in mid January, forcing its collapse. Tripoli MP Najib Mikati was appointed on Jan. 25 as prime minister-designate but has so far been unable to form a new Cabinet.

Also Sunday, two brothers in Burj al-Barajneh resumed work at an illegal construction site after threatening a police patrol that had appeared on the scene.

Armed with Kalashnikov rifles, Hassan Nasrallah al-Attat and his brother Sleiman threatened to fire on a police patrol that had approached the illegal construction site they had been working at, forcing the security forces to withdraw from the scene. Following the encounter, the two brothers resumed their work at the construction site.

The police patrol has informed the prosecutor general of the incident.