NAHR EL-BARED, Lebanon — Ali Said Mear­bani, 64, mopped his brow and grate­fully accepted a cool glass of water offered to him by a worker in the cafe. Mear­bani had more rea­sons to be thank­ful, though. He had just escaped Lebanon’s lat­est war zone.
Mear­bani lives in the vil­lage of Ard al Hamra, which bor­ders Nahr el-Bared, the teem­ing Pales­tin­ian camp that for the last three days has been bru­tal­ized by a vol­ley of tank shells, 155mm mor­tar rounds and machine gun fire from the Lebanese Army, which is in a fierce bat­tle with Fatah al-Islam, a rad­i­cal jihadist group.
Early Sun­day morn­ing, his four-story home was invaded by the jihadis, who forced him, his wife, his three daugh­ters and his daughter-in-law into the base­ment before tak­ing up sniper posi­tions on his roof.
“They told us, ‘We won’t leave unless we’re dead,’” said Mear­bani as he jug­gled cell phone calls from con­cerned rel­a­tives.
Three of the four were for­eign, he said, say­ing he could tell from their accents that one was from Saudi Ara­bia, one was from Yemen and one was Sudanese. He said he couldn’t tell where the fourth was from.
Finally, after a ter­ri­fy­ing night with his chil­dren hud­dled around him while shells fell around them, the women in the fam­ily — his wife and his daughter-in-law — went up to beg the Fatah al-Islam mil­i­tants to leave them in peace.
They refused and soon the Lebanese Army was shelling his home. He only escaped because he had a friend in the Lebanese Army and was able to tell him where they were and what check­point he was near. The friend, a sergeant, told him to wear a white T-shirt so the Army would know he meant no harm. He did, and the Army spir­ited him out to safety.
Lebanese and not a Pales­tin­ian, he praised the Army for fir­ing on every sniper posi­tion Fatah al-Islam had taken up.
“Even when they were hid­ing in a mosque,” he said, “the army shot at the mosque.“
Walk­ing out of his home and through his vil­lage, he said he passed at least 10 dead bod­ies. “They were not from the camp, so I assume they were ter­ror­ists.“
Such scenes will be increas­ingly com­mon when Lebanon’s lat­est vio­lence even­tu­ally winds down. By the end of the day Tues­day, the death toll stood at about 67 peo­ple and thou­sands of refugees were stream­ing from the camp wav­ing any­thing col­ored white.
At least 30 Lebanese Army sol­diers, 18 mil­i­tants and 19 civil­ians have been killed since Sun­day in the worst vio­lence to hit Lebanon since the end of its 1975 – 90 civil war, accord­ing to Army and Pales­tin­ian sources.
One civil defense worker in charge of col­lect­ing bod­ies, who gave his name only as Mazen, said there were “lots of bod­ies” just inside the north entrance to the camp where Fatah al-Islam, a rad­i­cal jihadist group with an al Qaeda-inspired ide­ol­ogy and pos­si­ble ties to Syria, was hold­ing out against hun­dreds of Lebanese troops. He didn’t know, how­ever, if they were fight­ers or civil­ians.
For the past three days, Fatah al-Islam’s posi­tions have been ham­mered by 155mm mor­tars, tank blasts and 50-caliber machine gun fire from the army, but so far they seem to be hold­ing fast.
As the worker moved to col­lect more bod­ies, Lebanese troops rolled up to the secured entrance to the cheers of dozens of young men from the the sur­round­ing area. Atop their armored per­son­nel car­ri­ers, the sol­diers grinned and flashed vic­tory signs.
Khoder Taleb, 36, the regional man­ager for the civil defense forces, said Fatah al-Islam had “hun­dreds” of fight­ers and that many were for­eign. He said that two bod­ies around the cor­ner, near the check­point and which reporters were not allowed to see, were burned because of an explo­sion, but their iden­tity papers on them said they were Bangladeshis. There was no way to con­firm this.
Another civil defense worker showed this reporter a photo of one of the bod­ies on his cell phone he said he had snapped and offered to take the reporter’s phone to snap more pho­tos of the bod­ies. Taleb pre­vented him from doing so, how­ever.
Around mid-day, a United Nations con­voy entered Nahr el-Bared loaded with food, water, med­i­cine and even gen­er­a­tors for the camp, which has been cut off from most sup­plies since the fight­ing started on Sun­day. Taleb al Sal­hani, a secu­rity offi­cer for the con­voy, said he was wait­ing for a cease-fire to be put in place before he would send his trucks in.
It was in vain, how­ever, as when a truce appeared to be in place by late after­noon, his con­voy was attacked while it was in the camp unload­ing its good. Robin Cook, Lebanon direc­tor for the UNRWA, said seven trucks went in, but three were dis­abled and were aban­doned in the camp.
The Pales­tini­ans aren’t much liked by the Lebanese, who often blame them for start­ing the civil war in 1975. Pales­tini­ans, in turn, aren’t too fond of the Lebanese who host them because Beirut won’t grant them cit­i­zen­ship or allow them to work in almost 70 pro­fes­sions, con­sign­ing most of the 350,000 refugees to poverty.
Tuesday’s fight­ing con­tin­ued inter­mit­tently through­out the day, with a long truce start­ing at about 4:30 and appar­ently hold­ing so far through the night. Up to 10,000 pan­icked and mis­er­able Pales­tini­ans have taken this oppor­tu­nity to flee to another nearby refugee camp, Bed­dawi, also near Tripoli. Many hung white sheets from their vehi­cles or held white plas­tic bags out the win­dows. So des­per­ate to escape that many were dri­ving on flat tires.
By all accounts, they’re flee­ing what many Pales­tini­ans call a mas­sacre.
Between 30,000 and 40,000 peo­ple are wedged into a tiny area, barely a few square miles in size. Fatah al-Islam has taken over build­ings in the area and in sur­round­ing ham­lets, often with­out fully eject­ing the fam­i­lies liv­ing there. The Lebanese Army, in turn, is shelling those build­ings, and often reduc­ing them to rub­ble.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency has said that dozens of build­ings have been destroyed with the res­i­dents inside. The total num­ber of casu­al­ties has so far been impos­si­ble to deter­mine, how­ever, as the Lebanese Red Cross has not been inside the camp yet. Joseph Boutrous, the North Dis­trict chief of logis­tics for the LRC, said his men had man­aged to get to hos­pi­tals 17 wounded civil­ians on Mon­day and 10 wounded by mid-day Tues­day.
“We have 15 cars wait­ing to go in if we get a cease fire,” he said, sur­rounded by eager men ready to go in.
Later that day, a ten­ta­tive truce took hold and his men took off. There is as yet no con­fir­ma­tion on the num­ber of civil­ians wounded or killed.