.Rare Tour Reveals Lebanon Camp's Ruin
NAHR EL-BARED REFUGEE CAMP, Lebanon (AP) - Shopping lists scribbled in a notebook, a blue doll's hat, a Valentine's Day card - these are some of the small pieces of Palestinians' shattered lives left behind in the rubble of this refugee camp.
Scenes of devastation - destroyed homes, blackened shops, burned vehicles, scorched tree trunks - greeted journalists allowed into the camp Friday for the first time since the Lebanese army defeated al-Qaida-inspired Fatah Islam militants 26 days ago after more than three months of fighting.
Reporters were able to inspect a stretch of about 500 yards of the camp's northern section. Army officers said the area beyond that was still riddled with mines and unexploded ordnance.
The northern district was once the better-off commercial area of the camp - a rare pocket of relative prosperity among Lebanon's 12 impoverished Palestinian refugee camps. But on Friday, bulldozers were removing debris and mounds of earth from the main road, lined with burned shops and multistory apartment buildings reduced to their concrete skeletons, the rubble of their walls piled at their bases.
Soldiers, many wearing surgical masks against the dust and smell of decaying bodies, flashed "V for victory" signs as they rode by in military trucks and armored personnel carriers that kicked up heavy dust.
Soldiers said the stench was overpowering from the corpses - apparently of militants - still lying in the heart of the camp.
The devastation underlined how far authorities have to go to rebuild the camp to allow the return of the 30,000 residents who fled in the first week of fighting. Most of them are now packed into a nearby camp and fear the promises of return will never be fulfilled.
Officials of Palestinian factions in Lebanon, who are generally seen by the refugees to be out of touch with their plight, gave speeches in the rubble to a frenzied group of reporters about the need to quickly rebuild.
"Nahr el-Bared camp didn't fall. What fell was terrorism," said PLO envoy Abbas Zaki, wearing a gray suit and tie and standing underneath an empty flower pot on the twisted balcony railing of a heavily damaged two-story building.
Osama Hamdan, the representative of the Palestinian Hamas group, said he hoped more than 1,000 families could return in the next few weeks to the camp's northern section, where he claimed 60 percent of the buildings were safe.
The Lebanese government has estimated that $249 million would be needed to rebuild the seaside camp just outside the northern Lebanese port city of Tripoli. At a donor's conference in Beirut earlier this month, Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said another $55 million was needed for emergency relief for the camp, and a further $28.5 million for nearby communities affected by the fighting.
The prolonged battles, which ended Sept. 2 with the collapse of Fatah Islam and the army's takeover of the nearly destroyed camp, left 164 soldiers dead and dozens of militants killed.
According to Zaki, the fighting also claimed the lives of 47 Palestinian civilians. About 310 others were injured.
Before the battle, Nahr el-Bared was a sprawling densely built town of low-built houses and taller buildings in the northern section - referred to as the new camp - along the Mediterranean coast. It was known for its businesses, where even neighboring Lebanese sometimes came for bargains at the shops of relatively well-off merchants - unlike other Palestinian camps in the country, most of which are impoverished and avoided by the Lebanese.
The months of fighting saw Lebanese troops that ringed the camp pound it with artillery and tank shells in prolonged bombardments, as the Fatah Islam militants holed up inside responded with rockets and mortars.
Now many of the tall buildings were shattered, with holes near the top and twisted steel reinforcement bars sticking out of chunks of mangled concrete.
Graffiti by the troops on what remained of the camp's walls and shutters included obscenities against Fatah Islam leader Shaker al-Absi and his deputy Abu Hureira, who was killed in a shootout with security forces after he fled the army's siege of the camp before the battles ended. Al-Absi, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, fled the camp hours before the army took over and is believed to still be at large.
"Al-Absi under the boots of army commandoes," says one scrawl on a shuttered shop. Other graffiti boasted of the army's valor, patriotism and dedication.
"We sacrifice our lives for the homeland," said one yellow slogan.
MyWay
Scenes of devastation - destroyed homes, blackened shops, burned vehicles, scorched tree trunks - greeted journalists allowed into the camp Friday for the first time since the Lebanese army defeated al-Qaida-inspired Fatah Islam militants 26 days ago after more than three months of fighting.
Reporters were able to inspect a stretch of about 500 yards of the camp's northern section. Army officers said the area beyond that was still riddled with mines and unexploded ordnance.
The northern district was once the better-off commercial area of the camp - a rare pocket of relative prosperity among Lebanon's 12 impoverished Palestinian refugee camps. But on Friday, bulldozers were removing debris and mounds of earth from the main road, lined with burned shops and multistory apartment buildings reduced to their concrete skeletons, the rubble of their walls piled at their bases.
Soldiers, many wearing surgical masks against the dust and smell of decaying bodies, flashed "V for victory" signs as they rode by in military trucks and armored personnel carriers that kicked up heavy dust.
Soldiers said the stench was overpowering from the corpses - apparently of militants - still lying in the heart of the camp.
The devastation underlined how far authorities have to go to rebuild the camp to allow the return of the 30,000 residents who fled in the first week of fighting. Most of them are now packed into a nearby camp and fear the promises of return will never be fulfilled.
Officials of Palestinian factions in Lebanon, who are generally seen by the refugees to be out of touch with their plight, gave speeches in the rubble to a frenzied group of reporters about the need to quickly rebuild.
"Nahr el-Bared camp didn't fall. What fell was terrorism," said PLO envoy Abbas Zaki, wearing a gray suit and tie and standing underneath an empty flower pot on the twisted balcony railing of a heavily damaged two-story building.
Osama Hamdan, the representative of the Palestinian Hamas group, said he hoped more than 1,000 families could return in the next few weeks to the camp's northern section, where he claimed 60 percent of the buildings were safe.
The Lebanese government has estimated that $249 million would be needed to rebuild the seaside camp just outside the northern Lebanese port city of Tripoli. At a donor's conference in Beirut earlier this month, Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said another $55 million was needed for emergency relief for the camp, and a further $28.5 million for nearby communities affected by the fighting.
The prolonged battles, which ended Sept. 2 with the collapse of Fatah Islam and the army's takeover of the nearly destroyed camp, left 164 soldiers dead and dozens of militants killed.
According to Zaki, the fighting also claimed the lives of 47 Palestinian civilians. About 310 others were injured.
Before the battle, Nahr el-Bared was a sprawling densely built town of low-built houses and taller buildings in the northern section - referred to as the new camp - along the Mediterranean coast. It was known for its businesses, where even neighboring Lebanese sometimes came for bargains at the shops of relatively well-off merchants - unlike other Palestinian camps in the country, most of which are impoverished and avoided by the Lebanese.
The months of fighting saw Lebanese troops that ringed the camp pound it with artillery and tank shells in prolonged bombardments, as the Fatah Islam militants holed up inside responded with rockets and mortars.
Now many of the tall buildings were shattered, with holes near the top and twisted steel reinforcement bars sticking out of chunks of mangled concrete.
Graffiti by the troops on what remained of the camp's walls and shutters included obscenities against Fatah Islam leader Shaker al-Absi and his deputy Abu Hureira, who was killed in a shootout with security forces after he fled the army's siege of the camp before the battles ended. Al-Absi, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, fled the camp hours before the army took over and is believed to still be at large.
"Al-Absi under the boots of army commandoes," says one scrawl on a shuttered shop. Other graffiti boasted of the army's valor, patriotism and dedication.
"We sacrifice our lives for the homeland," said one yellow slogan.
MyWay
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