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.

Tear gas and flying flag sticks

After what seemed like a fairly inflammatory speech by some political big cheese at the end of the otherwise-uneventful funeral of the recently assassinated Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, an odd combo of hard-line Sunni and right-wing Christian groups (for anyone wondering why these two make odd bedfellows check here) made a rush for the Serail (the Lebanese government's Whitehall, I guess) and had it out with the army and police who were guarding it. Sticks and stones versus tear gas wasn't really a fair fight, but I guess they started it. As an aside,  for any one with a stuffy head, tear gas, it seems, is great for clearing sinuses once you get passed the whole retching confusion thing.

There's a few more here too.

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.