Two Syrians dead in Lebanon refugee camp fire
A fire ripped through a refugee camp in Lebanon on Monday killing two Syrians, including a boy, and burning nearly two dozen tents, a local official said.
Around 1.5 million Syrians have sought shelter in Lebanon from the seven-year civil war raging next door, with many living in camps in the Bekaa Valley in the east of the country.
The fire in the northeastern town of Yammouneh early Monday “killed a 46-year-old man as well as a boy aged seven or eight,” said Deputy Mayor Hussein Shreif.
Security forces and a UN team were dispatched to the area of the camp, he said.
One of the refugees said: “At 3:00 a.m., we heard screaming. Then we saw flames (spreading) and we couldn’t put them out.”
An AFP photographer saw people milling amid the cinders of former tents, nothing remaining of them but a few metal poles.
Near a field of red earth, a young girl in a green hoodie picked through a pile of clothes that had survived the fire.
Lebanon’s national
news agency, NNA, said “civil defense put out the fire with difficulty due to the low visibility, thick fog and smoke.”
Fires have often erupted in Syrian refugee camps, where many depend on international aid for their survival.
Security forces sweep down on settlements.
On Wednesday, further to the east in the area of Arsal, the army detained hundreds of Syrians, including over no or expired identity documents. also the regularly informal