A sea of flags

No words can ever describe the crowd that swamped downtown Beirut today. Hundreds of thousands? A million? No official number has been released so far but estimates exceed 800,000. That’s for Martyrs’ square, Riad El Solh square and neighboring streets only; but what about people stuck in traffic on every road leading to the capital? What about demonstrators who could not get to Beirut because Hezbollah bribed or threatened bus drivers not to pick up anyone heading for the demonstration?

Once again, we went to Martyrs’ square on foot. The scenery was a bit different this time. There were no army roadblocks but the amount of people swarming the streets was tremendous. Young men and women were waving Lebanese flags out of crammed cars, buses and pickup trucks, chanting anti-Syrian slogans. Streets in Ashrafieh were turned into rivers of red and white. In Martyrs’ square, we had to hold each other’s hands when moving from one place to another to keep from getting lost in the crowd. Roads were not recognizable anymore, just a sea of waving flags. Even nearby buildings were invaded by the protestors…

Once more I took several pictures for this blog’s readers to enjoy.