Tensions threaten to reach new highs this summer in Lebanon amid calls on social media to attack Syrian refugees and allegations that several Syrians detained by the Lebanese army had been tortured to death. “We are witnessing a rise in tensions between Syrians and Lebanese,” Prime Minister Saad Hariri acknowledged July 15 during a meeting at the Grand Serail, government headquarters in Beirut. “The entire country feels the weight [of the refugees].”

Amid chronic economic and social problems, Lebanon now hosts the highest per capita concentration of refugees worldwide, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Syrians constitute roughly a quarter of Lebanon’s small population, estimated at 4-5 million people.

In private, many Lebanese compare the current situation to the eve of the civil war (1975-1990), which was sparked by tensions between local communities and Palestinian refugees. Lebanese media often amplify this fear, publishing sensationalist articles like one in early May in Ad-Diyar claiming that there were 300,000 pregnant Syrian women in Lebanon, implying that the number of Syrian refugees would top 2 million by the end of the year.

The latest controversy began July 4 when the Lebanese army announced the deaths of four Syrian men in its custody. They had been arrested in late June along with more than 300 others during raids on several Syrian refugee camps in Arsal, near the border with Syria. The army asserted in a press release that the men — Mustafa Abd el-Karim Absse, Khaled Hussein el-Mleis, Anas Hussein el-Husseiki and Othman Merhi el-Mleis — had “suffered from chronic health issues that were aggravated due to the climate condition.”