Protesters Block Ring Road after Suicide, Overnight Clashes

Anti-corruption protesters blocked the vital Ring highway in central Beirut on Wednesday evening, hours after security forces fired tear gas overnight to disperse protesters blocking the same road.

Some demonstrators said they came to protest the way they were treated by security forces the night before as others said they were enraged after reports said a 41-year-old man took his own life on Wednesday due to his dire living conditions.

Protesters who came from the main protest site in downtown Beirut meanwhile said that they are opposed to the blocking of the road, urging the other protesters to stage a sit-in outside the Interior Ministry.

Huge numbers of riot policemen were present on the Ring highway on Wednesday evening. Minor scuffles erupted with the protesters but the demo remained largely peaceful.

"How many more people need to commit suicide for them to wake up?" one man told a local television channel, after the second such reported death in four days.

Protesters lit candles on the roadside in memory of those who took their lives, apparently crushed by the burden of Lebanon's spiraling economic crisis.

Lea Zeinoun, the director of a non-governmental organization running a suicide prevention hotline, said a person ending their life was chiefly the result of a mental illness.

But she said she did fear a rise in cases "especially if the situation in the country doesn't improve."

"Today we received 15 calls in three hours, while we usually receive 150 on average per month," she told AFP.

The Ring highway has been repeatedly blocked since the eruption of the popular uprising on October 17 and has witnessed many confrontations with security forces and supporters of Hizbullah and the AMAL Movement.