{"id":29756,"date":"2019-01-19T06:23:10","date_gmt":"2019-01-19T06:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=29756"},"modified":"2019-01-19T06:23:10","modified_gmt":"2019-01-19T06:23:10","slug":"houthi-militia-must-respect-neutrality-of-aid-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=29756","title":{"rendered":"Houthi militia \u2018must respect neutrality of aid workers\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nDELHAMIYEH, Lebanon:\u00a0Snowstorms and weeks of bad weather have turned Lebanon\u2019s lush Bekaa Valley into an unliveable swamp for tens of thousands of Syrian refugees.<\/p>\n

\nThe Litani River flooded many of the fields stretching across the two majestic mountain ranges flanking the Bekaa after this year\u2019s second major storm hit on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\nSome families had barely finished repairing their tents when the most severe winter they have faced yet unleashed another crushing night of snow, wind and flooding.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe spent all night emptying the tent but the water kept coming in,\u201d said Thaer Ibrahim Mohammed, a red and white headscarf wrapped around his head.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThis is the worst winter,\u201d said the greying man.<\/p>\n

\nGaggles of children made the most of the afternoon sun and pulled rubber boots on their bare feet to romp in the camp\u2019s sludgy alleys and have snowball fights.<\/p>\n

\nThe shelters in \u201cCamp 040,\u201d which lies on the edge of the village of Delhamiyeh and is one of the many informal settlements that dot the valley, are all the same.<\/p>\n

\nThey were erected on concrete slabs and their roofs are held down with used tires.<\/p>\n

\nTheir tarpaulin walls provide a flimsy protection against strong winds and freezing temperatures.<\/p>\n

\nThe camp looks like it could have sprung up just weeks earlier but many of its residents have lived there since 2012, when the Syrian conflict escalated.<\/p>\n

\nAbu Ahmad, a native of Homs spending his seventh winter in Lebanon, said aid was inadequate.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThis year there was a lot of rain. But humanitarian organizations have reduced aid,\u201d he said, standing on a brick placed as a stepping stone in a muddy puddle.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cYou just need to look: Do you think this sheeting keeps us warm or keeps the water out? They gave us nothing, no new tarps, no firewood, nothing,\u201d the young man said.<\/p>\n

\nAid organizations say they are doing their best to distribute emergency aid to the most vulnerable among the estimated 340,000 refugees living in the Bekaa Valley.<\/p>\n

\nThe UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said close to 24,000 people were affected by extreme weather conditions.<\/p>\n

\nSome tents were destroyed by the storms that elsewhere in Lebanon have cut the main road to Syria several times, flooded the highway north of Beirut and forced schools to close.<\/p>\n

\nRelief agencies have had to relocate families who were left homeless, once again, in several feet of snow.<\/p>\n

\nFatima, a 20-year-old refugee originally from the main northern Syrian city of Aleppo, had to leave her tent with her family but opted to squeeze in with neighbors.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe tent is totally flooded, we can\u2019t live in it. So we took our things and left, what else can we do?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DELHAMIYEH, Lebanon:\u00a0Snowstorms and weeks of bad weather have turned Lebanon\u2019s lush Bekaa Valley into an unliveable swamp for tens of thousands of Syrian refugees. The Litani River flooded many of the fields stretching across the two majestic mountain ranges flanking the Bekaa after this year\u2019s second major storm hit on Wednesday. Some families had barely…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":29757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}