Tragic news from Akkar shook the country and raised concerns about the chaos and lawlessness prevalent across Lebanon due to the idleness of its politicians.
On Sunday, during Eid al-Fitr weekend, a violent dispute broke out in Bebnine, Akkar in North Lebanon, over the filling of petrol, a commodity running low in Lebanon.
Multiple shots were fired resulting in the death of Ghais Masry, the grandson of the gas station’s owner Samir Masry. He was rushed to the hospital but succumbed to his wounds.
Masry, a law graduate from the Lebanese University (LU), would have turned 25 in December.
His cousin Yasser took to Facebook to express regret that the tragic situation in Lebanon “caused first and foremost by the neglect of the Lebanese state and its deep corruption made people kill and be killed for the sake of gasoline.”
“Ghais went today and tomorrow another young man will go, and the real killers will sit in their palaces on the thrones of corruption and look at the poor fighting, just as the Romans laughed and cheered as they looked at the prisoners and the poor fighting to the death,” he wrote.
Last month, the caretaker Energy Minister Raymond Ghajar, blamed the gasoline crisis on smuggling to Syria.
Numb to people’s pain, the state has turned a blind eye to smuggling, which costs Lebanon’s economy $15 million a day, according to a report by France24.
Some parties even justified it. A cleric close to Hezbollah said that smuggling was an “integral part” of Hezbollah‘s operations.
