The Wall Street Journal reports on the plight facing Syrian refugees living in Lebanon after a winter storm hit the area earlier this month:
Syrian refugees living in Lebanon are struggling to keep themselves warm after a winter storm hit the area in early January.
Image credit: ortonesque on freeimages.com.
One of the strongest winter storms in the Middle East in a decade has left hundreds of thousands of refugees—from the streets of Beirut to makeshift tent settlements in the mountainous, rural north—living in inadequate shelter, desperate to find sources of heat.
Storm Zina, as it has been nicknamed in Lebanon, began on Jan. 5, dumping ice and snow on six countries—Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Israel—with temperatures plunging as low as 12 degrees Fahrenheit. The storm began to ease last Friday, but snow continued to fall over Lebanon’s mountains this week.
On Jan. 7, Lebanon’s national news agency reported two deaths during storms that hit the town of Shebaa, in southern Lebanon, including an 8-year-old boy. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees confirmed three deaths from the storm in Lebanon thus far, including the two in Shebaa.
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