Thousands of Palestinians fled a badly damaged refugee camp on Wednesday, reporting bodies in the streets after a fragile truce halted fighting between the Lebanese army and al Qaeda-inspired militants.
Vehicles choked the main road out of the Nahr al-Bared camp, where the Lebanese army had been battling the Fatah al-Islam militant group since Sunday in Lebanon's worst internal fighting since the 1975-1990 civil war. "It's mass destruction in there. The dead people are strewn on the streets. Nobody is picking them up," said camp resident Awad Saeed Awad as he boarded a bus for the nearby Beddawi camp where many were seeking refuge.
"We haven't seen Fatah al-Islam. They're probably hiding in the alleyways." The fighting has killed at least 22 militants and 32 soldiers. Camp residents have spoken of dozens of civilians dead, with bodies in the streets and buried under rubble.
An official source at Lebanon's defence ministry put the militant death toll at between 50 and 60 fighters, including fighters who died in clashes in the northern port city of Tripoli on Sunday. A third of the camp's 40,000 residents had fled, the Red Cross said. At Beddawi camp, hundreds packed the corridors and classrooms of one school, sleeping on mattresses on the floor.
Seven schools run by the United Nations in Beddawi were full of evacuees, said Hoda Elturk, spokeswoman for UNRWA - the UN agency which cares for Palestinian refugees. Sitting on a mattress on the floor of one of the schools, Umm Ali said there had been no water in Nahr al-Bared. The fighting eased on Tuesday afternoon following an informal truce. A military source said there was calm but added "the matter is not over".
"It will only end with the final end of this gang", he said. Some residents had not left the camp, where aid workers were doing their best to help. "The ceasefire holds, but there is sporadic shooting every now again," UNRWA's Elturk said. "It's very dangerous and risky to move inside the camp." Eleven trucks loaded with food for the evacuees were due to arrive from Jordan on Thursday, an ICRC spokeswoman said.