Abu Tawfiq stands in the soot-encrusted ruin of his home as cold rain blows in where an outside wall once stood.

"This room is Hiroshima and the other one is Nagasaki," says the former school teacher who, agreed to speak on condition of anonymity.

He's one of some 5,000 Palestinians who recently returned to the battle-ravaged ruins of this coastal refugee camp in north Lebanon, home to more than 40,000 people before the outbreak in May of three months of fighting between the Lebanese Army and Al-Qaeda-inspired militants of Fatah al-Islam.

The 106-day confrontation – Lebanon's worst internal violence since the end of the 1975-90 civil war – killed 168 soldiers, over 200 militants, and dozens of civilians and turned Nahr al-Bared into a wasteland of flattened buildings. The buildings still standing have had doors and windows blasted out, roofs caved in from artillery shelling, and walls pocked by rockets and machine-gun fire.

The Lebanese government in September secured pledges of $22 million from international donors to help the refugees, far short of the estimated $382.5 million needed to provide relief and rebuild Nahr al-Bared. The government has said it will rebuild the camp, but has offered no specifics nor deadlines. With Lebanon gripped by deep political crisis over the forthcoming presidential election, the fate of the camp falls low on the government's list of priorities.

The Palestinians began returning to their homes on Oct. 10, just over a month after the fighting ended. Their homes are located in the "new camp," a spillover cordon ringing the original plot of land earmarked by the Lebanese government in 1948 for the refugees. The "old camp," which saw the worst of the fighting, remains off-limits to Lebanese troops and appears to have been completely destroyed.

Despite the terrible conditions inside Nahr al-Bared, the Palestinians say they are returning partly because the camp is their home and because many cannot afford the skyrocketing rents at the Badawi refugee camp, seven miles to the south. The Badawi camp took in the bulk of the evacuees fleeing Nahr al-Bared at the onset of the fighting. The demand for somewhere to stay saw rent for even a garage soar from $25 a month to $200, a huge sum for the impoverished refugees.

"Before the fighting, you could have rented a three-bedroom house in Badawi for $100," says Abu Mohammed, a newly returned refugee. Like all residents interviewed, Abu Mohammed spoke on condition of anonymity.

Access to Nahr al-Bared is still tightly controlled by the Lebanese army.

Journalists are banned from the camp and only a few non-governmental organizations and the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees have been allowed inside.

Troops suspected of looting camps

The restricted access is compounding allegations made by returning Palestinians that Lebanese troops looted, vandalized, and torched their homes, in some cases after the cessation of fighting and before the refugees began returning home. The walls of homes are covered with graffiti, some patriotic messages signed by individual army units, others insults directed toward the Palestinians.

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