Lebanon’s Finance Minister, Ghazi Wazni, a key negotiator with the IMF over a rescue plan to help Lebanon exit a deep financial crisis, resigned on Monday over last week’s devastating Beirut port blast, local media reported.
Wazni is the fourth to walk away after the ministers of finance, information and environment, mounting more pressure on President Michel Aoun.
Lebanese Prime Minister, Hassan Diab, meanwhile has informed Aoun that he was planning to resign shortly, Al- Arabiya reported, quoting local media reports.
Minister of Telecommunications, Talal Hawwat, said he would resign if the government did not resign Monday.
A Cabinet meeting is scheduled for Monday, amid reports that the whole government might resign. If a total of seven ministers resign, the Cabinet would effectively become a caretaker government.
The explosion, along with a severe economic crisis, has been widely blamed on decades of corruption and misrule by Lebanon’s entrenched political class.
The blast on Tuesday killed more than 160 people and wounded more than 6,000. It caused widespread devastation across the capital and obliterated the port.
It appears to have been caused by a fire that ignited a stockpile of explosive material stored at the port since 2013.
