Guardian looks at refugees

 

Another sad story chronicling the plight of Syria's refugees, read it here. 

Independent World cover

To save you squinting at Loveday's wonderful words the online edition is here.

Refugees face cold winter

Some 400,000+ people have fled the conflict in Syria, which has now been dragging on for nearly two years. Many of those that left with nothing but what they could carry live in extremely basic conditions – tents made of scavenged billboard hoardings, old schools, farm outhouses and part-constructed buildings. Now they face the prospect of a harsh winter with little protection from the cold. These images are all from a three day trip in the north of Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley with Save The Children in order to tug some heart/purse strings before the worst of the season sets in.

Syria tearsheets

A few screen grabs from around the web from various trips to Syria this year.

CNN Aleppo spot

My pictures and Zak 'big nuts' Brophy on the chaos in Aleppo on CNN:

Airstrikes in Aleppo

 This is my photo essay from Aleppo, which will appear in the October issue of Executive. There's also a slideshow on their website, here.

The show goes on in Tripoli

Two neighbourhoods in Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli have been at war with one another since the early 80's. Every so often the violence will kick off, a few people get shot by snipers and homes get destroyed by RPGs. These days, the conflict is being chucked in with the war currently going on across the border, as the two sides mirror the Sunny vs Alawite conflict currently wracking Syria. I'm not sure if either side have even tried to take so much of an inch of ground in this feud, which has been running longer than I've been alive, or whether they ever will. The last bout – which kicked off at the tail end of last week – was particularly nasty, with over 100 wounded and 17 totally pointless deaths so far. Read more by the talented Mitchell Prothero in the Observer, who picked up one of my pics from AFP. Also check out this account by Josh Wood here.

Syrian refugees flood to Lebanon

They may be buggers to find, but apparently there's some 90,000 Syrians thought to be in Lebanon taking refuge from the fighting across the border. The conditions in which they live differ greatly, but at the muddy end of the stick are a group who fled the embattled Babr Amr district in Homs and set up camp on a farm in the Bekaa valley near Chatura. As I said, finding these refugees can be tricky, and getting them to allow you to take pictures of them is neigh on impossible, due to fears of retribution for family members still left inside. However, a commission last week from Caritas – one of the many NGOs working diligently to offer what help they can – was a golden ticket into a story I've been bashing my head against repeatedly over the last year.

Why a .762 round is no joke

 These were taken while working on a story with the ever wise scribe Mr Josh Wood and talented translator Miss Naziha Baassiri, which will no doubt soon be gracing the pages of the International  Herald Tribune for y'all to read (hopefully with one of these pics). All three patients are suffering paralysis to some degree, which they claim is due to gunfire from government forces whilst they were attending protests, and are receiving treatment at a private hospital in Tripoli.

Picking up the pieces

I missed the fighting in Tripoli on Saturday but on Sunday, myself and colleagues Josh Wood and Zak Brophy went to sift through (almost still smoldering) the rubble. We saw residential apartments in both neighbourhoods that had been wrecked by RPG/Energa fire, with people from both sides claiming that the other was entirely to blame.  

This scenario is old news here, these neighbourhoods have been fighting for years. However, the current conflict in Syria has given them yet another reason to have at it, and sadly, likely the the funds to do so too. During the Civil War Lebanon was a sandpit in which the world waged its wars; it'll be a sad day if this becomes the case again.

Protests and potshots in Tripoli

A new sight for me at the Sunni anti-Assad protests in Tripoli (that'll be the Lebanese one) on Friday was a small female contingent, albeit separated from the male demonstrators by a rather stern chaperone.

 Following the protests, fighting erupted between militias in two neighbouring yet warring districts of the city. The hardline Sunni/Salafi and Alawite communities have been at each others' throats since the civil war but things are heating up here as it's now a sectarian microcosm for the fighting across the border in Syria. More about that from the tweets of the talented Mr. Joshua Wood here and the BBC. Sadly I filed too late too make the Reuters deadline, dammit.

Apologies for the watermarks but it's still an ongoing news story and bloggers are fond of stealing pictures and not attributing them.    

A sunni milita man runs beneath a Free Syrian Army flag as he heads toward the fighting.

Streets empty as gunfire rings out.

Tripoli residents cautiously peer down the street at Bab al-Tabbaneh, the Sunni neighbourhood  involved in the fighting.