Palestinian Refugees return to Nahr al-Bared
Correspondents Don Duncan and Andrea De Marco report on efforts to help Palestinian refugees return to Nahr al-Bared.
Reproduced with permission from The Christian Science Monitor.
Correspondents Don Duncan and Andrea De Marco report on efforts to help Palestinian refugees return to Nahr al-Bared.
Reproduced with permission from The Christian Science Monitor.
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, a staunch U.S. ally, has confirmed that a Lebanese military investigation is underway following allegations that Palestinians living in the country's Nahr al-Bared refugee camp were beaten by Lebanese soldiers, and their homes looted and torched, in the aftermath of last summer's battle between Islamist militants in the camp and the Lebanese army.
A car bomb struck an American Embassy vehicle in Beirut yesterday, killing at least three bystanders and wounding a Lebanese Embassy employee in the first direct attack on U.S. interests in Lebanon in 20 years.
An estimated 20 people, including an American passer-by, were injured in the attack on the armored embassy sport utility vehicle, which Lebanese officials immediately linked to a wave of attacks on governing party legislators.
The Lebanese government and Palestinian leaders have struck a quiet deal that would grant a new legal status to at least 3,000 Palestinians living in Lebanon without any identity documents, The Daily Star has learned. The plan was approved at a meeting last Friday that included representatives from the Interior Ministry, General Security, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee (LPDC) and the Palestine Liberation Organization, PLO consul in Lebanon Mahmoud al-Asabi said.
As I hunched over a borrowed desk in the sixth floor office of Beirut's Daily Star yesterday afternoon, it may have been the computer's pale glow that warmed my face, but the joyful, smoldering embers of my heart came from a warmth only a reporter knows: I had a front page scoop.
It was a small story by world standards, affecting only about 3,000 Palestinian refugees. But it had regional implications and I was proud at having wrested it from the pressed lips of PLO officials and the leaden silence of the country's bureaucats.
Don Duncan reports on how a quasi duty-free zone has brought Lebanon's local population together with the half million Palestinians living in the country.
Total running time = 3:36
I thought it was time for some video around here!
Here are glimpses of two kinds of living spaces the Nahr al Bared refugees are and will inhabit.
Nahr al Bared has two parts to it. The Old Camp, to the west, was the original land the refugees arrived to in the late forties/early fifties was the worst hit and still remains closed off to. (In the sat image, the old camp is on the left, where the yellow traces are concentrated.)
The voice of fugitive militant leader Shakir al-Abssi arose like a specter from Lebanon's recent past yesterday. In a voice recording posted on the Internet, the radical leader of the Fatah al-Islam terrorist group threatened further attacks against the nation's U.S.-backed army.
In May, entrenched in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, the Jordanian-born al-Abssi led his Fatah al-Islam militants, which included many non-Palestinians, in a 15-week battle that tested the Lebanese national army and destroyed the refugee camp.
I took a break from Nahr al Bared to report this.
Of course, it is not completely unrelated to the camp.
Two United Nations peacekeeping soldiers were injured Tuesday by a roadside bomb on a coastal motorway south of Beirut.
Company Sgt. Dave Williams and regimental Sgt. Maj. John McCormack, both from Dublin, Ireland, were traveling in a U.N. vehicle when the bomb exploded at 2:50 p.m. local time, causing them "superficial injuries," according to Irish Lt. Col. Eamon O'Siochrú, head of the Irish team that is part of United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
I spent almost all day among the Nahr al Bared refugees who are staying in temporary shelter in schools and community buildings at Baddawi camp in
Beddawi is the closest Palestinian camp to Nahr al Bared and so received many of the refugees fleeing the conflict when it broke out in May.