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One of the refugee women, whose name has not been released, said she woke up to screaming around 10 p.m. before leaving her tent with her children after seeing waves of refugees pouring out of Minya camp. .
The refugee confirmed that during her departure she witnessed a torrent of bullets that passed her. He also said that “10 men who were standing at the gate of the camp prevented the men from leaving, before a huge fire broke out in the refugee tents,” while noting that the Syrians had fled from the side fences, after being prevented from leaving the camp gate.
Another refugee talks to the radio correspondent and tells him that she was inside her tent when the fire broke out in her, noting that the men took her and her children by force after they had to divide the tent to save her of the fire.
The refugee also said that she spent the last night on the street without shelter after the fire in her tent, and that she had nothing or nowhere to go.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had stated that the great fire in Minya camp caused several injuries and they were taken to a nearby hospital, without specifying their number.
UNHCR spokesman Khaled Kabbara told Agence France-Presse that “the fire spread to all the houses in the Minya camp,” built with plastic and wooden materials, where some 75 Syrian refugee families reside.
It also indicated that several of these families fled from the Minya camp “due to fear generated by the sounds such as explosions caused by the explosion of gas cylinders”, explaining that “the size of the fire was enormous due to the highly flammable materials built, including the country house and the presence of gas cylinders in it “.
Officially, the Lebanese National News Agency said: “Confusion arose between a person from the Mir family and some Syrian workers working in Miniyeh, leading to a fist fight and the fall of three people.”
The agency clarified that after the confusion, “several young people from the Al-Mir family intervened and deliberately set fire to some tents for displaced Syrians in the Minya camp,” before “civil defense vehicles intervened and worked to extinguish the fire, while an army and security force intervened to control the situation.
Lebanon estimates the number of Syrian refugees residing on its territory at around 1.5 million, of which around one million are registered with the High Commissioner for Refugees, and these people live in difficult humanitarian conditions, exacerbated by the economic crisis that was exacerbated by the outbreak of the new Corona virus and then the catastrophic explosion that occurred in the port of Beirut in August. 2020.
It should be noted that Lebanon has witnessed racist campaigns and hate speech against refugees in recent years from time to time and calls for their deportation, and this incident is not the first in which Syrian refugees have been subjected direct physical violence.
In late November 2020, some 270 Syrian families left the northern Lebanese city of Bcharre, fearing reprisals, after a young Syrian was accused of killing a city resident.
Syrians fear returning to their country for fear of retaliation by the Bashar al-Assad regime against them, especially those who oppose them, in addition to the absence of basic necessities for life in the regime-controlled areas.
