Hundreds of Syrian refugees were forced to flee their makeshift camp in north Lebanon after their tents were torched when fighting broke out between local youths and camp residents, aid officials said on Sunday.
At least three were injured in the incident on Dec.26 in the Miniyeh region near the coastal city of Tripoli, which was followed by angry youths setting the campsite on fire, Lebanon's state-owned National News Agency said.
The fire raged for four hours and firefighters tried to put it out, the Lebanese civil defense said.
A Lebanese official said the army is investigating the cause of the fire and conducting raids to round up those responsible for the altercation.
Lebanon has around 1.5 million Syrian refugees who fled since the beginning of the conflict in 2011 and but many Syrians have long been migrant workers and a main source of cheap labor for the construction and agriculture sectors.
Khaled Kabarra, a UN refugee agency (UNHCR) spokesman, said the nearly four hundred residents who fled went to other enclosed encampments or found temporary shelter in vacant schools and hotels.
Kabbara said four people were injured in the fire and hospitalized with minor injuries. He said some residents of the camp returned Sunday to see if anything could be salvaged from the fire.
Altercations between residents and Syrian refugees often “catastrophically impact the community as a whole," he added.
The country has seen a rise in tensions between refugees and residents in the last years that humanitarian workers and politicians say are fueled by both racism and anger by Lebanese hit by a financial crisis who blame refugees for taking their jobs.
Lebanese authorities have called on refugees to return to Syria even though rights groups warn that the war-torn country is not yet safe.
In November, around 270 Syrian refugee families fled the northern Lebanese town of Bsharre after a Syrian national was accused of shooting dead a Lebanese resident, sparking widespread tension and hostility.
