Around 150 Syria refugees are living a desperate existence in a small park to the north of Paris. NGOs and France's Green party are urging authorities to do more to help the families while they wait for their asylum requests to be processed.
They ended up there penniless after wandering from country to country for months.
Yahya, Aziz and 150 other Syrians swapped the brutality and death of a war zone for hand-to-mouth survival in a small park in a working-class suburb of Paris, squeezed in behind a hotel just a few metres away from a busy ring road.
Some come from Homs, others from Aleppo or the Syrian port city of Latakia, leaving behind the violence of a three-year conflict that has now claimed more than 150,000 lives and forced around half the population to flee their homes.
"We stay here all day. At night, some manage to get hotel rooms paid for, others sleep in cars or at the mosque," says Yahya, a former dental technician from the central city of Homs who speaks French fluently, pointing to refugees lying down on mattresses in the park in Saint-Ouen.
The 44-year-old, who refuses to give his surname, "abandoned everything" along with his wife and children after Syria erupted into violence in 2011, leaving behind a pretty villa and relinquishing any hope of returning.
Lebanon, Algeria, Egypt, back to Algeria, Morocco, Spain and finally France: "We knocked on every door," he says, grey hair cut short, black jumper worn out.
It's a similar story for Aziz, 54, who left Syria at the end of 2012 with his six children and wife.
The family criss-crossed Europe before ending up in the park, which has become his "headquarters."
"I also lived in Homs, in the Baba Amr neighbourhood (a rebel area besieged by the army). Everything has been destroyed there," Aziz says.
During their first few weeks in France, the family slept in a hotel. But for several days now, they have been camping out in a car.
THESE PEOPLE SHOULD BE FORCED TO STAY IN THE FIRST SAFE COUNTRY THEY REACH AND NOT BE LET FREELY ROAM AROUND THE WORLD TO PICK AND CHOOSE WHICH COUNTRY THEY WANT TO LIVE IN.
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