UN calls for $15.5m after clashes in Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees appeals for $15.5 million to respond to the fallout of clashes in Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp earlier this month.

The agency, known as UNRWA, says the money is needed to repair infrastructure damaged in the clashes in the Ein el-Hilweh camp, provide alternate schooling locations for children who will now be unable to use the schools in the camp, and hand cash assistance to people who have been displaced from their homes.

Several days of street battles broke out in the camp between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement and Islamist groups in the camp after Fatah accused the Islamists of gunning down one of their military generals on July 30.

While an uneasy truce has prevailed since Aug. 3, clashes could resume if the Islamist groups do not hand over the accused killers of the Fatah general, Mohammad “Abu Ashraf” al-Armoushi, to the Lebanese judiciary as demanded by a committee of Palestinian factions earlier this month.

The bulk of the funds requested by UNRWA, about $11 million, would go to provide one-time $1,200 cash aid payments to families whose homes have “become uninhabitable due to the conflict,” the agency says in its appeal, as well as smaller aid payments to other vulnerable families in the camp.