Photo by: AFP

The clothes are still hanging from the balconies, and the doors of the apartments are still open, but there is no living soul in Al-Bakkar, which turned into a void area after the violent clashes that have resulted in 9 dead in just two days in Tripoli, North Lebanon. “I escaped from the house Friday with my wife and my four children. In the meantime, the apartment was completely on fire, as well as the furniture, the electrical appliances, and even our clothes”, declared Zouheir Moslemani to AFP. “I worked hard for nine years in Nigeria to build this house. Everything faded away with the fire”, said this 35-year-old man. He stared at the black walls of his house located in Bakkar, an area that is mostly Sunnite and that is known, along with the Chaarani area, as the “Hariri Project” site (in reference to the name of the assassinated ex-Prime Minister Rafic Hariri who built a real estate complex there).

Around this man, the furniture is deserted and nobody is venturing on the street. A crushing silence replaced the rowdiness of children playing football or the cacophony of the interpellating residents. The inhabitants eluded the violent clashes between the Sunnites and the Alawites, originating from a Shiite branch; harsh clashes that resulted in 9 dead since their start on the night of Thursday to Friday. Those fights increased the number of dead people to 23 in the confrontations that are periodically erupting since June.

Fatema al-Kawwas is a 64-year-old woman who escaped, with her four children, from her house in Chaarani. The apartment, which was hit by a rocket, became uninhabitable. “Even if I receive compensation, I will never come back, unless I am 100% sure that the clashes will never erupt again”, she said.