ARSAL, Lebanon: Braving Syrian army patrols and treacherous winter weather, hundreds of people fled into Lebanon in the last 24 hours to escape the heaviest shelling of their border towns in a year-long crackdown on protests against President Bashar Assad.
| Could be worse, they could be fleeing to Yemen. Or Mauritania... |
In the hillside town of Arsal in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, residents say between 100 and 150 families arrived from Syria on Sunday — one of the biggest refugee influxes so far.
A dozen families spent Sunday night in a three-story apartment block in Arsal after fleeing what they said was a sustained army attack on the Syrian town of Qusair with tanks, rocket-propelled grenades and helicopters. Families trekked on foot through snow-capped hills to safety, but many others were caught as they tried to flee, one refugee told Reuters in Arsal.
Although Arsal is only 10 km (six miles) from the Syrian border, the young manÂ’s family had to walk 40 km through valleys, he said, as the mountain route was cut off by snow.
Only a few families, of roughly 2,000 people who fled Qusair, made it across the border without being stopped by Syrian troops.
Most refugees said they would not return until the Syrian government fell. But one, a rotund middle-aged man, said he was a fighter with the Free Syrian Army who had traveled to Lebanon just to bring his family to safety. |