A massive fire engulfed several tents in an east Lebanon refugee camp Monday, killing a baby and injuring 11 others, hospital and UNHCR sources said. A previous report had said three other children and an elderly man died in the fire, but it was later discovered that they had passed out after inhaling smoke, a source from al-Bekaa Hospital told The Daily Star. The source said the baby was burned nearly beyond recognition. A UNHCR spokesperson confirmed the death toll, saying the four others originally reported dead were being treated for smoke inhalation. The fire occured at the Syrian refugee camp in the western Bekaa Valley town of al-Marj, where 170 families had been living. Many of those were displaced due to Monday's fire, a security source said. The injuries of the 11 surviving victims ranged from smoke inhalation to medium burns, the hospital official said. Civil Defense forces extinguished the blaze, which engulfed at least five tents. The cause of the fire remains unknown. Monday's incident comes one week after an abandoned Syrian refugee camp burned down in the same town. The incident was the latest in a recent string of similar tragedies to befall the estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, many of whom live in overcrowded camps and run-down buildings. Last month, three Syrian children were killed when a fire broke out in their room of their apartment complex in the Zahle town of Barr Elias. A week before that, three other Syrian children were injured when a fire broke out at a four-story building in the southern city of Sidon. In March, two Syrian children burned to death when a fire broke out in their house in Dohat Aramoun, south of Beirut. That incident came one month after three Syrian children died in a fire at their tent in a refugee camp in Bhenin, north Lebanon.
