Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab was expected to announce his government’s resignation Monday amid popular outrage over the deadly Beirut port explosion that has reignited angry street protests.

The under-fire cabinet, struggling to weather the political storm, met amid widespread demands for an end to an entrenched political system widely seen as inept, corrupt and dominated by sectarian interests and family dynasties.

During the session, “most of the ministers called on the government to step down,” Sport and Youth Minister Vartine Ohanian told AFP, saying she backed such calls.

Diab, who was set to address the nation on television at 1630 GMT, “is heading towards resignation,” said another minister who asked not to be named after four of his colleagues had already stepped down.

According to the health ministry, at least 160 people were killed in Lebanon’s worst peacetime disaster, 6,000 were wounded and about 20 remained missing.

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 specialised equipment remained at work at the disaster’s charred “ground zero”, where the search was now for bodies and not survivors.

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 fertiliser, was left unsecured at the port for years