View over the Bekaa plain. (Credit: AFP)
The Lebanese police announced on Friday that they arrested the father of a girl who died after being violently hit on the head in the Bekaa.
In a statement, the Internal Security Forces (ISF) said that after the death of the six-year-old girl from a blow to the head, they had managed to locate and arrest the father, the main suspect in the case. The arrest took place on June 17, according to the police, the day after the child's death.
The little girl had undergone two unsuccessful operations at Dar al-Amal University Hospital in the village of Douris, according to sources quoted earlier this week by L'Orient-Le Jour's correspondent in the Bekaa. The forensic doctor who examined the child's body, quoted by the state-run National News Agency (NNA), found that the victim had been "severely beaten with a sharp object."
According to the ISF, the girl's father – a Syrian, identified by his initials M.H., aged 25 – was arrested in the village of Taraya and "admitted" to the killing. He is also accused of raping his two other children, two little boys aged four and five, whose bodies bear "clear marks" of this violence.
Last August, Christophe Boulierac, Head of Advocacy and Communication for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Lebanon, spoke to L'Orient-Le Jour about an "alarming" increase in various forms of child abuse, ranging from neglect to physical and sexual abuse. This increase is due in particular to the impact of the financial crisis on families and the "inaction" of the authorities in the face of the country's collapse.
This article originally appeared in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.