are having to live through. here s the bbc s gabriel gatehouse on how the government reacted to those protests when the crisis first took hold. the interesting thing about lebanon is that the leaders spend most of their time politically at odds with each other, grappling over cabinet positions, who controls what ministry, etc, but when the system itself is threatened as it was in 201990s etc, but when the system itself is threatened as it was in 2019 these protests started and peoples came out united to demand change, the politicians are closed ranks. they put the military and the militias out on the street. and then you may remember this this explosion in august last year in the beirut port. over 200 people died, thousands were injured. large parts of the city were decimated. and they re yet to be rebuilt. you can see the remaining impact of the blast here. the blast has been blamed on thousands of tonnes of ammonium nitrate which was stored incorrectly in a warehouse. the crisis in