Water at Shatila refugee camp in Beirut’s southern suburbs is now so salty and ridden with chemicals that metal cutlery rusts after less than half an hour’s exposure to the brine.
“Imagine having water so bad that you can’t have metal cutlery? It’s hell water really,” says Ahmed, a resident at the camp.
Gesturing at the salty, foul-smelling liquid oozing from a nearby tap, his friend Moussa Deeb, an electrician originally from Damascus, adds: “Have you ever woken up and tried washing your face with sea water?”