The security forces reportedly postponed until Monday a plan set to reopen major roads and highways blocked by protesters “due to last minute complications,” al-Joumhouria daily reported on Monday.

In Hong Kong, it was a complicated extradition dispute involving a murder suspect. In Beirut, it was a proposed tax on the popular WhatsApp messenger service. In Chile, it was a 4-cent hike in subway fares.

Recent weeks have seen mass protests and clashes erupt in far-flung places triggered by seemingly minor actions that each came to be seen as the final straw. The demonstrations are fueled by local grievances, but reflect worldwide frustration at growing inequality, corrupt elites and broken promises.

Lebanon's army on Saturday removed roadblocks set up by protesters in at least one critical juncture linking Beirut to the suburbs and the country's east amid a nationwide wave of protests, including a campaign of civil disobedience.

The protesters had set up several roadblocks around Beirut and on major roads to enforce their calls for the government to step down.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on protesters around the world Friday to follow champions of nonviolent change like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., and urged world leaders "to listen to the real problems of real people."

The U.N. chief told reporters that "disquiet in peoples' lives" has sparked demonstrations around the world from the Middle East to Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Tens of thousands of people, many of them young and unemployed men, thronged public squares and blocked main streets Friday in the capitals of Iraq and Lebanon in unprecedented, spontaneous anti-government revolts in two countries scarred by long conflicts.

Demonstrators in Iraq were beaten back by police firing live ammunition and tear gas, and officials said 30 people were killed in a fresh wave of unrest that has left 179 civilians dead this month. In Lebanon, scuffles between rival political groups broke out at a protest camp, threatening to undermine an otherwise united civil disobedience campaign now in its ninth day.

Iraqi police fired live shots into the air as well as rubber bullets and dozens of tear gas canisters Friday to disperse thousands of anti-government protesters, sending young demonstrators running for cover and enveloping a main bridge in the capital Baghdad with thick white smoke. Twenty-three protesters were killed and dozens were injured, security officials said.

Tensions rattled Lebanon's nine-day protest movement Friday as supporters of Hizbullah clashed with protesters and riot police at Beirut’s Riad al-Solh Square.

The demonstrators -- who have thronged towns and cities across Lebanon -- have been demanding the removal of the entire political class, accusing many across different parties of systematic corruption.

Lebanese protesters set up tents, blocking traffic in main thoroughfares and sleeping in public squares on Friday to enforce a civil disobedience campaign and keep up the pressure on the government to step down.

By early afternoon, scuffles broke out in the epicenter of the protests in central Beirut, when supporters of Hizbullah entered the area to reject chants against their leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who was named by the protest movement as one among the political elite who must leave.

Turkish forces and their allies attacked Syrian government troops in northeastern Syria on Thursday, killing some of them, and they also clashed with Kurdish-led fighters, the state news agency in Damascus and a war monitoring group said.

The fighting underscored the risks of violence as multiple and often opposing armed forces jostle for new positions in the tight quarters of the northeastern border zone.

Protesters listening to the speech of President Michel Aoun on Thursday

showed dissatisfaction with a speech that came eight days after the uprising began.