Exodus from Nahr el-Bared

In 2007, bombings forced around 40,000 Palestinians from their homes in the Nahr el-Bared camp in Lebanon. Samuel Rodríguez spent four months in 2007-08 photographing the lives of refugees who found themselves once again displaced.

At the center of the 2007 Lebanese conflict between the Lebanese Armed Forces and Fatah al-Islam, Nahr el-Bared, a refugee camp for displaced Palestinians in northern Lebanon, was bombed and destroyed by the army.The camp was engulfed by fighting between the Lebanese army and militants from the Islamist group Fatah al-Islam. The conflict, the bloodiest in the country since the civil war ended in 1990, erupted after security forces raided a building in Tripoli to arrest bank robbery suspects, according to BBC News. The militants who resisted arrest then attacked army posts at the entrances of the refugee camp. Violence quickly spread around and into the camp.

The attacks not only forced around 40,000 civilians from their homes —most of the population of the camp— and sent them seeking shelter in other refugee camps in Lebanon, but also doubled their experience of displacement.

Taken between October 2007 and January 2008, these photographs by Samuel Rodríguez depict the everyday life of Palestinian refugees who have found themselves once again without a home.

Samuel Rodríguez is a freelance photographer based in Barcelona, Spain. His works have appeared in major newspapers in Spain, such as El Mundo and La Vanguardia.