http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/29/MNG5FK7J1Q1.DTL&feed...
A crisis of 'unbelievable proportion'
20-25%% of Lebanese are now refugees, economy chief says
Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times
Saturday, July 29, 2006
(07-29) 04:00 PDT Rmeish, Lebanon -- They moved in cars and on tractors,
waving white pieces of cloth, along high mountain roads pocked with craters
from bombing and shelling. Mortar fire boomed a constant beat from the next
ridge, in Israel.
The refugees were part of the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese fleeing
violence in the southern part their country, creating a humanitarian crisis
that their government says is now bigger than it can handle. The United
Nations estimates that between 500,000 and 700,000 Lebanese have been
displaced, a giant number for a tiny country of 3.5 million.
"The scale of the problem is of an unbelievable proportion," said Sami
Haddad, the Lebanese minister of economy. "We have between 20 and 25 percent
of our population that is turned into refugees. What government can cope
with that?"
