BEIRUT: A Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon has been put on lockdown after the UN announced the first confirmed case of coronavirus in one of the country’s numerous and crowded camps.
The patient, a Palestinian refugee from Syria, has been taken to the state-run Rafic Hariri hospital in Beirut, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said in a statement late Tuesday.
Medical experts were due to visit the Wavel camp in the eastern Bekaa Valley later on Wednesday to carry out tests, the agency added.
The testing will focus on the woman’s relatives and people she has interacted with, as well as 50 others chosen arbitrarily “inside the camp and its surroundings,” said Lebanon’s official National News Agency.
In coordination with Lebanese security forces, Palestinian factions in charge of security have imposed a lockdown on the camp, preventing anyone from entering or leaving, the NNA report said.
The United Nations and aid groups have repeatedly warned that refugees and migrants in crowded camps worldwide are at special risk of the new coronavirus.
More than 70 million people globally been forced by conflict, persecution, violence and abuses to flee their homes, including more than 20 million people living as refugees, according to UN data.
More than 2,000 people live in Wavel, according to statistics released by Lebanon’s government after a 2017 census, but the UN agency says the population of those registered in the camp are much higher.
Aid groups have warned that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian and Syrian refugees living in Lebanon’s overcrowded camps are the most vulnerable and that self-isolating patients in the camps where sanitation is weak would be one of the top challenges.
“The main concern remains... the spread of coronavirus in the overcrowded Palestine refugee camps where there are very limited possibilities for home isolation,” an UNRWA spokeswoman said earlier this month.
More than 174,000 Palestinians live in Lebanon, according to official figures, with most residing in camps ruled by Palestinian factions beyond the reach of Lebanese security forces.
But unofficial estimates say the Palestinians, whose forefathers fled the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, could number as many as 500,000.
And out of the 1.5 million Syrians Lebanon says it hosts since the civil war broke out in the neighboring country nine years ago, nearly one million are registered with the UN as refugees.
So far just one Palestinian, who lives outside a camp, and three Syrians have tested positive in Lebanon for COVID-19 compared to 677 infections and 21 deaths across the country, according to officials.
First virus case in Lebanon Palestinian refugee camp: UN
https://arab.news/ynp73
First virus case in Lebanon Palestinian refugee camp: UN
- The patient, a Palestinian refugee from Syria, has been taken to the state-run Rafic Hariri hospital in Beirut
- More than 174,000 Palestinians live in Lebanon, according to official figures
Israeli police kill Bedouin man during raid in southern Israel, local official says
- The shooting of 36-year-old Muhammed Hussein Tarabin threatened to worsen the already strained relations between the Israeli government and the country’s Bedouin minority
TEL AVIV: Israeli police shot and killed a Bedouin Arab man during an overnight raid in his village in southern Israel, according to media reports and a local official.
The shooting of 36-year-old Muhammed Hussein Tarabin threatened to worsen the already strained relations between the Israeli government and the country’s Bedouin minority.
Israeli police have been conducting a large-scale operation in the village of Tarabin for the past week in what they describe as a crackdown on local crime.
Talal Alkernawi, the mayor of the nearby town of Rahat, confirmed the man’s death.
Israeli police said they opened fire on a man who had “endangered” forces during an arrest raid.
The Israeli news site Haaretz cited relatives as saying Tarabin, whose family name shares the name of the village, was in his home.
In a video statement, Tarabin’s 11-year-old son, Hussein, said that men in uniform came to their house at night. He heard shots and saw his father’s body lying on the ground.
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the police force, expressed support for the police. “Anyone who endangers our police officers and fighters must be neutralized,” he posted on X.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that the country would do everything to prevent the Negev desert in southern Israel from becoming the “wild south”. He congratulated Ben-Gvir on leading the initiative and said he would visit the region in the coming days.
Israel’s more than 200,000 Bedouin are the poorest members of the country’s Arab minority, which also includes Christian and Muslim urban communities. Israel’s Arab population makes up roughly 20 percent of the country’s 10 million people. While they are citizens with the right to vote, they often suffer discrimination and tend to identify with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The Bedouin sector has grappled with crime and poverty, and about one-third of its members live in villages that the Israeli government considers illegal. Israel says it is trying to bring order to a lawless area, but Bedouin leaders accuse the government of neglect, trying to destroy their way of life or pushing to relocate them to less desirable areas.
Residents say police have made around two dozen arrests in the village of Tarabin over the past week. Nati Yefet, a spokesman for the regional council of unrecognized villages in the area, said most have been quickly released.
“They’re looking for people, crime-related things, but they didn’t find anything,” Yefet said. He accused Ben-Gvir of intensifying the raids in the run-up to elections expected later this year.
Marwan Abu Frieh, of the Arab rights group Adalah, said Israel has stepped up house demolitions in recent years, leaving thousands of residents without shelter and worsening the plight of communities often denied basic services.
