Refugee Palestinians from Syria demand assistance

Displaced Palestinians from Syria who fled the civil war to Lebanon held a sit-in outside the offices of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency on Monday to protest the lack of international assistance.

The protest, held in the Beddawi refugee camp in the north of the country, was organized by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and demanded that the relief agency initiate an emergency plan to deal with their plight, the Daily Star Lebanon reported.

DFLP officials said treatment of the Palestinian refugees should not become politicized and claimed that they are not receiving the same treatment as Syrian refugees.

Citing Lebanon General Security figures, the report said that 13,000 Palestinians have fled to Lebanon and that they are facing increasingly hard conditions.

Earlier this month fighting erupted in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria, which is home to over 150,000 Palestinians. Rival factions that either support or oppose the Damascus regime have battled each other in the streets of the camp several times since the civil war began. Many residents have fled to Lebanon to avoid the fighting in Syria that has killed over 60,000 people since March 2011.