THE LEBANON:The Lebanese army has been accused of burning and looting Palestinians' houses, writes Lucy Fielderin Nahr El-Bared camp.
Mohammed Abu Hajar's sandals crunch over soot, glass and crumbled cement as he walks through his blackened flat.
"I worked all my life for this," he says, surveying a room that gapes to the sky and the ruins of Nahr El-Bared Palestinian camp, destroyed in a battle between the Lebanese army and Islamic militant group Fatah Al-Islam. "Now it's all gone."
Mattresses lie in one corner. Abu Hajar opens the oven's splintered glass door. "Was Shaker Al-Abssi hiding in here?" he asks, referring to the group's fugitive leader. He points to a bullet-riddled fridge, the only other remaining furniture. "Or perhaps he was in there?"
Like the vast majority of residents, Abu Hajar says he has been punished for the actions of a group he did not support.
The fighting killed at least 169 soldiers, 287 insurgents and 47 civilians. After the siege ended on September 2nd after almost four months, the army sealed and held this coastal camp in northern Lebanon. It remains barred to journalists.
The United Nations agency for the Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, estimates that as much as 85 per cent of homes were ruined or rendered uninhabitable. Water and electricity networks were destroyed.
But up to 6,000 Palestinians, out of 40,000 displaced, were allowed to return to the camp from late October.
Not only was the camp pulverised to ghastly mounds of rubble, leaning pillars and sagging roofs, but residents believe a systematic campaign of looting and torching took place, including after the army had declared victory.
Amnesty International has called for the claims to be investigated.
The government denied last week that any abuse had occurred and said the "terrorist gang" Fatah Al-Islam had attacked the Lebanese and Palestinian peoples.
Young men especially allege torture and harassment at checkpoints, claims documented by Human Rights Watch.
Huddled around a wood fire in the street, the Libani family fry egg and chips. Inside what's left of their home, walls are blackened and streaked with grease presumed to be an inflammable liquid.
"They took the sofas, the beds, everything," says Mahmoud Libani, house's owner. He opens a bullet-riddled wardrobe and holds a dress to the light. "Look, they shot our clothes to pieces for fun."
Fridges and sofas were nowhere in sight as the refugees streamed from the camp in May and June, yet house after house is now bare, with marks showing where furniture and appliances once stood.
Against a nationalistic frenzy stirred by the conflict - Lebanon's worst since the 1975-1990 civil war - few national media have been willing to call to account one of the country's few unifying institutions.
On the motorway to Beirut, a billboard depicts a red rose. "From the nation's army to its people," it reads.
Less affectionate messages awaited the returning Palestinians. "Whatever you build, we will destroy," is scrawled across one room.
Another piece of graffiti likens Palestinians to animals; yet another makes obscene comments naming the women of the house, presumably with the help of documents found there.
Relations have long been tense between the Lebanese and roughly 400,000 Palestinian refugees, about half of whom live in 12 camps. Some blame their guests for the civil war; many fear absorbing the Sunni Muslims could tip Lebanon's fragile sectarian balance.
Some cheer can be found amid the desolate landscape. It is wedding season in Nahr El-Bared.
As a dank autumn night draws in, a bride descends from a battered saloon, gathers up layers of white gauze and picks her way across a muddied dirt road.
Ahmed and Liliane Hassan are among scores of couples tying the knot after a lost summer.
A synthesiser releases a cascade of swirling Arabic strings as the bride and groom enter. The reception, above a makeshift clinic, is exposed to the sky and cables dangle from the roof.
After formalities and orange squash, a group of youths start the dabke, a Levantine folk dance. Revellers soon join the stamping, skipping circle, casting long shadows in the glare of a single lamp. "People are desperate to have something to dance for, praise God," one young woman shouts above the music.
There was no dowry: the groom's family kept their savings in gold in their house.
And there is no house: the groom's family built a flat above theirs for the couple, but it was pulverised. "We had it all furnished and decorated, ready for after the wedding," Liliane says. "God willing we'll one day have a home of our own where we can raise our children."