Relief supplies run low as refugees flood Beddawi

BEDDAWI, NORTH LEBANON: Relief supplies, resources and patience were all stretched thin on Saturday at this refugee camp, which has seen its population of 15,000 more than double in the four days since residents began fleeing fighting in nearby Nahr al-Bared. Medical teams and aid workers on the ground remained tight-lipped Sunday on the number of civilians killed inside Nahr al-Bared during a week of fighting between the Lebanese Army and Fatal al-Islam militants, despite having had increased access to the camp in recent days.

"Now most injured people have been evacuated," Lebanese Red Cross (LRC) spokesman Ghaleb Ayoubi told The Daily Star on Sunday, but he declined to offer a figure on the number of civilian casualties since fighting began May 20.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said three civilians evacuated from Nahr al-Bared to Safad Hospital in the Beddawi camp had since died.

News agencies put the number of civilian casualties as high as 20 Sunday, without specifying whether the deaths were inside Nahr al-Bared. Human Rights Watch spokesperson Nadim Khoury said two doctors at the camp reported that between 20 and 30 civilians had died there.

The PRCS is now distributing medical supplies - provided by the LRC and the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) - to help sick and elderly residents remaining in Nahr al-Bared, most of whom are suffering from dehydration, chest wounds and diarrhea, according to PRCS spokesman Muhammad Osman. At 6 p.m. Sunday the PRCS delivered 16 trucks filled with relief assistance to the camp.

Hoda al-Turk, a spokeswoman for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), said Sunday that about 25,000 refugees have fled Nahr al-Bared.

Displaced Palestinians on Saturday spilled out of the squalid, overcrowded makeshift shelters in Beddawi's schools into mosques, abandoned buildings and the homes of friends and family. Many of the refugees remained under the radar of aid workers and without access to humanitarian assistance.

"All the journalists are showing the kids playing basketball, but my sisters and brothers haven't eaten since Tuesday because the food they give us is not good," shouted university student and Nahr al-Bared resident Asmaa Abed al-Mouti in the stairwell of an UNRWA school inside Beddawi. "Why don't you come upstairs and take a photo of me and my mother sleeping on the floor?"

"I have exams in Tyre Saturday and I don't know how I'm going to get there. We spent all our money on clothes to wear when we got here," she said. "And how am I supposed to study?"

Noual and Sami Azad, a frail elderly couple from Nahr al-Bared who have been living in the Omar bin Khatib Mosque with nine other families since Thursday, wandered around looking for food. None had been delivered since they arrived.
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The head of Hamas in North Lebanon, Abu Rabih al-Chehabi, said UNRWA and other humanitarian agencies must step up assistance in Beddawi if tensions are to be contained.

"Until now we only had local help and international assistance has been weak," he told The Daily Star Saturday from his headquarters in Beddawi.

A second UNRWA spokesperson, Hoda Samra, said from a psychological point of view the circumstances of displaced Palestinians in Beddawi were distressing but that the agency was providing for their basic needs inside the camp.

UNRWA is distributing hygiene kits, pillows, blankets and mattresses to civilians inside Beddawi's shelters, and is pumping water to serve more than double the usual number of residents, which Samra called a "huge task."

The agency is also keeping track of displaced being hosted in private homes and distributing food parcels to feed a family of five for a month. To complement the hot meals provided by the ICRC and the Future Movement to refugees in the shelters, UNRWA is delivering bread to schools every other day, she said.

"Our challenge now is to find more accommodation because our schools are full and we need more space," she said on Sunday.

Sanitary conditions had also deteriorated by Saturday, said Dr. Joumana al-Ashkar, a PRCS volunteer in charge of a clinic run out of the guidance counselor's office at the Kawkab Boys Elementary School in Beddawi.

Though the clinic received 90 patients Friday and only 50 Saturday, the new arrivals suffered from ailments linked to poor hygiene and water filtration.

"Yesterday we had a lot of people with diabetes or asthma come in, a few ear infections, tonsilitis," she told The Daily Star on Saturday.

"We are still getting those cases, but today we got more gastrointestinal problems because the water is bad, and things are dirty, unsanitary. Bronchitis, rashes, bacterial infections - and a lot of pregnant women are coming in with diarrhea," she said.

The clinic can dispense non-prescription medication and writes prescriptions for patients to use at the UNRWA pharmacy. But if UNRWA does not have medication in stock, refugees must pay out of pocket and most cannot afford it, said Ashkar.

Some wounds are outside the scope of UNRWA. Nahr al-Bared resident Hassan Chehadi, 8, lost an eye on the second day of fighting, and now wears a white guaze patch to protect his empty right eye socket.

"He needs a glass eye but we don't have any money to buy it for him, so for now this is it," his father explained from the prayer room of the mosque they have slept in for the past four nights.