Palestinians say Lebanon army soiled Iran food aid
23 March 2009
"Camp residents refuse to eat what the police dogs have soiled," several Palestinian factions in northern Lebanon, including the Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, said in a statement received by AFP.
It referred to a shipment donated by Iran for residents of the Nahr al-Bared camp in northern Lebanon, which was devastated by deadly battles between a fringe Islamist group and the army in 2007.
The Palestinian factions said they could no longer receive the aid and accused the army of delaying its delivery describing this as a "humiliating" act.
The leftist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was among the factions which signed the statement, said that 200 tonnes of aid had arrived outside the camp three days earlier and been held up for "security reasons."
"Eleven trucks carrying around 3,000 food rations arrived three days ago and were kept at the entrance of the camp protected by the army," DFLP member Arkan Badr told AFP.
He said that each ration consisted of a sack of flour, rice, sugar, chick peas, lentils, a container of cooking oil and five kilos (11 pounds) of butter.
Military sources confirmed that dogs were used to search the trucks but insisted that they did not enter the vehicles and did not defile the food in any way.
"The search was due to security considerations and routine," one source said.
The mainstream Fatah faction did not sign the statement but group member Rifaat Shanaa also criticised the delay in delivering the food and told AFP "what is more shameful is the way it was searched."
"Residents of Nahr al-Bared prefer to die of hunger than have their dignity undermined."
Nahr al-Bared, where some 400 people, 168 of them Lebanese soldiers, were killed in 2007 fighting between the army and the Al-Qaeda-inspired group Fatah al-Islam, is among 12 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.
The Lebanese army does not enter the camps, leaving responsibility for security to Palestinian factions.
