After escaping civil war, Syrian families forced to flee attacks in Lebanon

By Anna Maria Guzelian

Beirut, Dec 22 (efe-epa).- Years after fleeing Syria’s war, Ahmad and his wife Noor have had to leave their home in Lebanon after they were attacked in retaliation for a crime allegedly committed by a Syrian refugee who they don’t even know.

The couple and their five children are one of at least 270 families who were forced out of the majority Maronite Lebanese neighborhood of Bsharri in late November.

They were driven by fears of “collective reprisals against Syrians in the town,” the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said.

A similar incident in 2017 forced them to temporarily move to the northern Lebanese town of Miniyeh.

Ahmad arrived in the neighboring Lebanon in 1994 and was joined by his family in 2013 after the war in Syria broke out.

“The feeling of being displaced all these times is really difficult,” says Ahmad, surrounded by his family in a run down, unheated house in a rural area that they have called home for a few weeks.

“We have already been displaced from our own country and now we are being displaced in this one,” he adds.

Fearing for their safety, they asked not to reveal their real identity or location. They are so terrified that they might be found that they refuse to be filmed by Efe.

The memory of the attack still haunts them.