Lebanon's government was teetering Monday as ministers' resignations over the deadly Beirut port explosion threatened to snowball and protesters' fury on the scarred streets showed no sign of abating.
The under-fire cabinet, struggling to weather the political storm, was due to meet in the afternoon amid widespread demands for an end to an entrenched political system dominated by sectarian interests and family dynasties.
Six days after the enormous chemical blast which wreaked destruction across swathes of the capital and was felt as far away as the island of Cyprus, residents and volunteers were still clearing the debris off the streets.
International rescue teams with sniffer dogs and specialized equipment remained at work at the disaster's charred "ground zero", where the search was now for bodies and not survivors.
According to the health ministry, at least 158 people were killed in Lebanon's worst peacetime disaster, 6,000 were wounded and around 20 remained missing.
The Lebanese want heads to roll over the tragedy and are asking how a massive stockpile of volatile ammonium nitrate, a compound used primarily as a fertilizer, was left unsecured at the port for years.
The country's top officials have promised a swift and thorough investigation -- but they have stopped short of agreeing to an independent probe led by foreign experts as demanded by the protesters.
Three ministers have already decided they could no longer stand with a government that has shown little willingness to take the blame or to put state resources at the service of the victims.
Marie-Claude Najm resigned as justice minister Monday, her office said, becoming the third to quit the government since blast, after the information and environment ministers stepped down earlier.
At least nine lawmakers have also announced they would quit in protest, as have two senior members of the Beirut municipality. The government falls if one third of its 20 ministers resign.
The August 4 blast, which drew comparisons with the Hiroshima atom bomb, was so enormous that it altered the shape of not only of Beirut's skyline but even of its Mediterranean coastline.
But it remained to be seen whether the disaster will also have a lasting impact on Lebanon's political landscape, whose masters were widely seen as being primarily bent on self-preservation and buck-passing.