Family dispute escalates in Naameh: Car plows into crowd, kills 1 person

A woman was killed and several people were seriously injured in Naameh, on the Chouf coast, after a driver plowed into a crowd with an SUV following a family dispute that escalated into fistfights, stabbings and an exchange of gunfire in the Abu al-Foz neighborhood.

A widely circulated video on social media since Thursday night shows a crowd of more than twenty people in a heated altercation on Wednesday in a street in the neighborhood. Several people are seen fighting before a vehicle suddenly crashes into several individuals at the scene, as people scream and panic ensues.

Contacted by L’Orient-Le Jour, a municipal police officer who requested anonymity said the dispute involved members of the same family living in the neighborhood, whose grandfather is said to have married four women. The argument is believed to have broken out between grandchildren, before their parents got involved.

According to the same source, a family member arrived at the scene to try to put an end to the altercation, but after being ignored, he drove his vehicle into his relatives. The woman who was killed is believed to be his nephew’s wife. The six injured, three of whom are in serious condition, were transported to Sibline Hospital. The driver subsequently turned himself in to security forces, who were deployed to the scene and opened an investigation, the state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported.

The municipal police officer added that this family belongs to the so-called Dum community part of whom were naturalized in the 1970s, noting that its members have old Lebanese civil status records in Moseitbeh, in the Lebanese capital.

The Dum community are a largely unknown Sunni Muslim community. Having come from India around the 3rd century, they gradually spread throughout the Middle East and are now present in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Turkey, and Iraq. Following the “naturalization decree” issued by former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 1994, most Dums who had been settled in Lebanon for several generations obtained Lebanese nationality. However, the extreme marginalization suffered by the community has seen no significant improvement, as Dums remain largely excluded and marginalized in Lebanese society.