evidence: Intense fighting in Syrian villages bordering Lebanon has led to a mass influx to Aarsal in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley. Local people, authorities and humanitarian agencies are working overtime to provide emergency services such as shelter, food, water, sanitation, health services and winter clothing. There is nothing new about Syrian refugees in Aarsal. Pitched high up in the barren mountains in the Bekaa valley some 40 kilometers from the border to Syria, Aarsal’s 47,000 inhabitants have for the past two and a half years been welcoming hundreds and even thousands of Syrian refugees every day. But the up to 10,000 refugees that poured into the town in the days around 15th and 16th of November 2013 is ‘unprecedented’. This has challenged both the people of Aarsal, its authorities and the humanitarian agencies working in the area. But the real tragedy lies with the refugees, many of whom had been displaced for months inside Syria before crossing the border to seek safety in Lebanon. [...] In Aarsal, emergency registration and distribution of mattresses, blankets and kitchen sets has quickly been established by humanitarian organisations in the days following the mass influx. After the rapid assessment, NRC has begun sealing-off unfinished houses and establishing partitions in large collective centres in Aarsal. Additionally, NRC’s social teams are referring refugees to registration and other services such as schools and health services.