A child lying on the floor on a carpet. (Credit: Abd Almajed Alkark/OLJ/Illustration)
An infant was found abandoned in a bag on a street in Tripoli, North Lebanon, on Tuesday night.
The baby girl, a few months old, is currently in the hospital and being treated for minor injuries, a security source confirmed to L'Orient-Le Jour. Once treated, the child will be placed in a specialized center, the same source added.
In a tweet, caretaker Social Affairs Minister Hector Hajjar said he was in contact with the relevant judicial authorities regarding the case. He confirmed the infant's hospitalization and that she is being treated for ''minor injuries.''
''A place has been secured for her in a specialized center to ensure that her rights are guaranteed, in a way that guarantees her safety and normal growth,'' Hajjar said in his tweet.
The infant's identity and the circumstances under which she was abandoned remain unclear. Different sources provided conflicting narratives of her rescue.
'Black garbage bag'
"An infant was abandoned in a city dump, in a black garbage bag," said Tripoli city council president Ahmad Qamar al-Din when contacted by L'Orient-Le Jour. "A group of dogs spotted the child and dragged her to a road near the municipality. The dogs then barked, attracting the attention of a passerby who took the infant to the hospital.''
A video circulating on social media networks gives another version of events. In the clip, a man with a blurred face claims to have saved the child from a dog.
"At around 2 a.m., I was passing by the Chahine Hospital in Tripoli," says the man in the video. "The road was dark and there was no one around. I saw a dog playing or hurting what I thought was a cat. I got closer, staying on my scooter, and realized that it was an infant."
"The child was tiny and her face was bruised from the bites," the man adds.
L'Orient-Le Jour was not immediately able to verify the man's account.
But according to the security source, the version of events provided by the man in the video is consistent with statements from eyewitnesses interviewed by the police, although it cannot be confirmed whether the man in the video is in fact the one who rescued the infant.
The source clarified that the infant was allegedly abandoned in a small dark alley behind the Tripoli municipality building, not in a garbage dump. The possibility of a group of dogs carrying off the child was also ruled out.
The man in the video claims he first took the infant to the Islamic Hospital, where she was fed and received first aid, before being transported to the government hospital in the Qobbeh neighborhood of Tripoli.
Since a severe economic crisis hit Lebanon in 2019, reports of child abandonment are unfortunately not uncommon. In 2021, a couple was arrested after abandoning their child because he had been reportedly born out of wedlock.
During the large-scale protests in the autumn of 2019, images of a father entrusting his child to the police, claiming he was no longer able to feed him, moved the country.