I visited a refugee camp that’s home to 20,000 people – scars of conflict are on every corner

Metro’s foreign correspondent Gergana Krasteva reports from Lebanon

My taxi driver keeps one eye on the road and the other on the rear-view mirror, as if expecting smoke to rise ahead of us.

The closer we get to Shatila Refugee Camp, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, the tighter his grip on the steering wheel becomes.

He is the second driver I hailed down – the first flat-out refused to drive to the neighbourhood. Both are skittish, and with some reason.

Ever since the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians during the Nakba in 1948, Shatila has been a haven for people fleeing conflicts to Lebanon’s capital – but also the epicentre for Israeli massacres.

In the wake of Israel’s escalating violations of the ceasefire with Hezbollah, which began last November 2024, residents fear that the war could engulf the camp too.

Having just returned from Nabatieh, the hardest hit major city in the south – just an hour’s drive from the capital – I can understand why Palestinians and Lebanese alike are on edge.

There, an Israeli attack blow-torched a car, killing two parents metres away from their child’s school. Israel alleged Hezbollah members were inside it.

It is the first of eight assassinations that would ripple across Lebanon in the weeks to come.

Meanwhile, Beirut – ever restless – is trying to move on from last year’s war with Israel. But in Shatila, where scars of past conflicts are on every corner, time does not move with the same pace.

My fixer, a gentle man who is a Palestinian refugee himself, awaits outside a pharmacy, a few minutes from the entrance of the camp.

Ahead lies one of the most densely populated areas in the world due to its high concentration of refugees in a small space.

More than 20,000 people live here – though some estimates go as high as 30,000 – in less than 1 square kilometre. A city crammed within a city, built on the promise of survival.

Shatila – and the impoverished conditions inside, which have not changed much in the past 75 years – rarely make the news; that is unless it is for a tragedy.

Beyond the crumbling concrete walls that surround Shatila, its main artery, the market. It is claustrophobic, relentless and at the same time, full of life.

The air is thick, powdered with dust kicked up by the roaring motorbikes, a constant fixture inside Shatila.

Yet, it is the smell – a mixture of frying oil and sewage – that assaults all the senses. Despite the best efforts of residents to keep the streets clean, the strained water and sewage systems are buckling under pressure after all these years.

Buildings – all adorned with Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) flags – on either side lean so close they seem to press each other for balance.

Above it all, a web of electric wires connect both sides, often dripping so low that I have to duck my head to avoid them.

Posters of Yasser Arafat overlook the sagging rooftops, while photographs of Palestinian leaders killed in Israel’s war in Gaza appear to have become a permanent fixture.

As I pass by a fruit and vegetable stall, the seller jumps up from his plastic chair, yelling at me for taking pictures.

Pointing at the Fuji X-T100 dangling around my neck, he questions who I am. Outside visitors are not unwelcome in Shatila, but residents are wary of new faces.

Once I tell him I am a journalist and I am reporting on the Palestinian chess club in the camp, his face softens and he takes me inside his shop to show me a large memorial dedicated to Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza.

Shatila is like a maize – and as soon as I step off from the market streets, I lose all sense of direction.

On several occasions, my fixer is forced to step in, yanking me back by the shoulder, whenever I venture too deep inside the camp.

‘Not that way, it is dangerous,’ he snaps, with his tone leaving no room for arguments, as I turn around from a dark, narrow street.

Before moving to the city of Saida, some 30 miles from Beirut, he grew up in the neighbourhood, and is well aware how quickly a wrong turn can lead to something bad.

Everyone I meet is eventually welcoming – and appreciative that I have travelled from London to report on what is happening inside.

The conditions in Shatila has not changed much in recent decades, except that it has gotten worse.

Every new wave of refugees – from Syria and from Palestine – has pushed the camp further into its limits.

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