Lebanon's top Christian cleric called on Sunday for early parliamentary elections and a government formed to rescue the country rather than the ruling "political class" after the vast explosion in Beirut's port threw the nation into turmoil.
The now-caretaker cabinet resigned amid angry protests over the Aug. 4 blast that killed more than 172 people, injured 6,000, left 300,000 homeless and destroyed swathes of the Mediterranean city, compounding a deep financial crisis.
Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rai, who holds sway in Lebanon as head of the Maronite church from which the head of state must be drawn under sectarian power-sharing, warned that Lebanon was today facing "its biggest danger".