BRITAL, Lebanon (AP) — Syrian refugee Ibrahim Abbas Ali was sleeping with his family in a tent in this eastern village when shortly before midnight they jumped up in fear and started fleeing when gunmen attacked them opening fire over their tents from different directions.
Later that night, the 50-year-old father of 15 saw from a distance fire in the small makeshift camp of about 25 tents housing nearly 200 Syrian refugees who have fled to safety in Lebanon away from their country’s civil war that has killed more than 190,000 people. When they returned the next morning, six tents, including two used by Ali, his two wives and children were turned to aches.
“All my official documents and those of my family were burnt even a U.N. card was lost,” said Ali, standing in front of his burnt tent and belongings along with his second wife, Fatima al-Ahmad and eight-year old son Ali who cannot see with his right eye as a result of an injury suffered years ago. “We lost all the aid we got from the U.N. and all what we were left with are the clothes we are wearing.”
The recent beheading by Islamic State extremists of two Lebanese soldiers has unleashed a wave of revenge attacks against Syrian refugees in Lebanon and a rash of kidnappings by rival gunmen that threatens to worsen the longer the remaining group of soldiers that are in captivity and the likelihood of more them being beheaded.
Attacks have occurred in different parts of Lebanon and ranged from torching tents in Brital to throwing stun grenades at another camp in a nearby town in the eastern Bekaa Valley, to mob attacks against refugees in the streets of the capital Beirut and its suburbs that injured some. In the eastern town of Bar Elias a Syrian was stabbed with a dagger in his back and a day after the incident he was still in the intensive care unit of a local hospital in the eastern town of Taalabaya.
It was not clear who is behind the recent attacks against Syrians although much of them occurred in predominantly Shiite areas in Lebanon.
Militants in Syria have demanded the release of Islamists detained in Lebanese prisons in exchange for the 20 soldiers and police. They also demanded the Shiite Lebanese militia Hezbollah to withdraw from Syria, where they are fighting alongside forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.
Many Lebanese Shiites back Assad, while Lebanon’s Sunnis back the mostly Sunni rebels fighting to overthrow him. [eap_ad_1] The Islamic State group has beheaded two soldiers, a Sunni and a Shiite Muslim. The attacks on Syrians intensified after the beheading of Abbas Medlej, a Shiite who came from the Bekaa Valley.
Medlej’s beheading led to sectarian kidnappings between Sunni and Shiite Lebanese in the Bekaa Valley. The army carried out raids until the 10 Lebanese kidnapped were all freed.
“The Islamic State has succeeded in transforming the slaughter of two Lebanese soldiers into a pretext for Lebanese to kidnap each other, and to practice new expulsions of displaced Syrians, some of whom fled the knives of the Islamic State, and others who fled the barrel (bombs) of the regime,” said a commentary on the main news broadcast of the leading LBC television. “They have succeeded in awaking the beast inside us.”
“For those living in (refugee) camps and in the crowded rooms in impoverished quarters, there is no need to ask of their identities. We have come to chase them in the nights, carrying sticks, and demanding they leave us, because they are Syrian refugees,” LBC said.
In Brital, refugee Mohammed Darwish, 45, said most of the people in the camp were sleeping on the night of Sept. 6, when about six SUVs arrived carrying unknown masked gunmen as well as others who did not have their faces covered. They scared everyone by shooting and storming the camp.
“Oh you dogs. We are coming to slaughter you,” Darwish quoted the gunmen as saying as he and his wife ran away to nearby fields with their six children. “Women and children ran away and we all watched the fire in the camp but no one dared to come back because they were shooting at us
