(Zaman Al Wasl)- A Syrian shoe-cleaner boy fell six stories in Lebanon’s Beirut after being chased by the municipality police last Wednesday.
The 14-year-old refugee lost his life immediately in a tragic incident sparks new outrage over mounting abuses against Syrians sheltered in Lebanon.
Ahmed al-Zou’bi was a member of a family of ten that fled southern Daraa province, escaping the Syrian regime bombardment.
He was working to help his porter father, one of his relatives told Zaman al-Wasl.
Surveillance cameras in al-Khayyat district showed the municipality police members chasing the child who was afraid of being arrested and his cleaning box confiscated.
Advocates and local activists called to hold perpetrators accountable.
Some 5.6 million Syrian refugees remain in neighboring countries – Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq – Amin Awad, UNHCR director for the Middle East and North Africa, told a news briefing. Some 37,000 have returned this year, UNHCR figures show.
Thousands of Syrians are unable to return because their homes were destroyed in the fighting, or because they fear military conscription.
A survey made by Zaman al-Wasl on a random sample of refugees in the camps of Arsal, including 210 refugees, showed that 92% of the refugees had refused to return, while 8% had agreed to return to the towns that they described as safe in the western Qalamoun.
Up to 250,000 Syrian refugees could return to their devastated homeland in 2019, while many others face problems with documentation and property that the Damascus government must help resolve, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said.
Since the Syrian revolution erupted in 2011, more than 560,000 people have been killed, and more than 6 million people have been displaced.
Zaman Al Wasl
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