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Lebanon: Syrian refugees trapped after Arsel attacks

August 23, 2014 at 3:36 pm

Syrian refugees are barred from leaving Arsel despite urgently needing medical care, medical professionals and aid workers inside the embattled border town told Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star.

Mahmoud Ezzedine, Arsel’s representative of the Lebanese NGO Shabab Al-Umma, said the camps on the outskirts of the town where militants were believed to have been hiding before launching their attacks on Saturday were empty due to the heavy bombardment in the area.

The refugee camps on the outskirts of the town are inaccessible to international organisations because they lie past the last army checkpoint before the Syrian frontier.

The Daily Star reported that refugees had been seriously injured and required medical care. “They need to leave Arsel,” Ezzedine said. “Some of them took the road to Labweh, but that’s the farthest they could reach because the army checkpoint on the road didn’t let them pass, and it’s the only way out.”

One of the main demands by ISIS militants in exchange for the cease-fire, brokered by the Committee of Muslim Scholars last Wednesday, was that a statement would be delivered by the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) assuring that Syrian refugees in Arsel would be safe from revenge attacks once they withdrew.

Despite the paradoxical statement by a group who just destabilised a community, most of whom were Syrians, refugees are now finding that their supplies are running dangerously low following an ISIS invasion.

Furthermore, Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil announced Wednesday that the recent clashes were proof that refugee camps could serve as a cover for “terrorists.” Assuming all shelters in the Arsel area were housing rebels, he said: “It’s easy for militants to hide in refugee camps, that’s why the army is targeting the camps.” He claimed that indiscriminate artillery fire set fire to some tent clusters. “Of course most refugees are not helping them, they hate them.”

No one seems to be on the side of the Syrians; both LAF and ISIS seem to be using their precarious existence to their favour, or more accurately using them to legitimise themselves, yet at the same time pushing them to become even more desperate: “We need everything, we need drugs, chest tubes, feeding tubes, sutures, bandages,” said Dr. Bassem Al-Faris, a Syrian doctor who manages Al-Rahma Hospital in Arsel. About 22 patients needed to be evacuated from the town, he told The Daily Star today.