By BEN HUBBARD and HWAIDA SAAD

AL
QAA, Lebanon — The mourners packed the vast hall behind the Mar Elias
Church and crowded around five white coffins, some clutching flowers or
photographs of the dead. A marching band struck up a dirge, and
relatives of the deceased raised their arms, wailing and swaying with
the rhythm.

Outside,
armored vehicles rumbled through the streets, and soldiers, police
officers and militiamen stood on rooftops and guarded intersections,
seeking on Wednesday to prevent further catastrophe from striking this
ordinarily sleepy, predominantly Christian town.

Two
days earlier, two waves of suicide bombers — four who carried out
nearly simultaneous attacks in the morning and four who attacked in
close succession in the evening — had blown themselves up here, killing five men and wounding dozens.

The attacks were a new, terrifying spillover from the civil war in neighboring Syria,
and they fractured the tenuous coexistence that had developed in Al Qaa
and beyond between Lebanese residents and the Syrians who have flooded
their towns seeking refuge from the violence at home.

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In many ways, the questions in Al Qaa echo those that followed attacks in Orlando, Fla.; Paris; and Istanbul:
How can a community protect itself from a lone assailant or a small
team of attackers with guns or bombs? And local leaders are struggling
with the same issue facing Europe as it deals with its own influx of
migrants: How to balance the desire to help with fears that the
newcomers could harbor a threat?

“It
is not easy for people, when their sons have died or are in critical
condition, to differentiate between terrorists and refugees,” the Rev.
Elian Nasrallah, the Roman Catholic priest who oversees Al Qaa’s
churches, said during an interview in his home. He had coordinated aid
for refugees and would help lead the funeral for the town’s dead.

The scale of the refugee crisis in Lebanon
would make Western leaders cringe. The country has added 1.5 million
Syrians to a population of only 4.5 million, giving Lebanon the world’s highest refugee count per capita.

Much of that burden has fallen on towns like Al Qaa in the Bekaa Valley, where low rents, proximity to Syria
and an abundance of agricultural jobs have encouraged so many Syrians
to settle that they now outnumber locals in many towns, straining
municipal services.

Al
Qaa, which means “the bottom” in Arabic, sits in the valley’s northeast
corner, at the foot of barren hills a few miles from the Syrian border.
Its native population has dwindled to about 3,000 in recent decades,
and there is little work for those who remain. Many of the town’s men
serve in the Lebanese Army, returning home to tend apple orchards and
olive groves after retirement. Other than the soldiers’ salaries, the
central government provides little.

“I’d
need to think a lot to come up with something,” said Elian Nader, a
member of the town council, when asked what Al Qaa got from the state.

The
town’s residents are nearly all Christians, and standing amid red
flowers in the central roundabout is a towering statue of Mar Elias, or
St. Elijah, holding a long, curved sword.

But
relations with nearby Muslims are good. During the interview, Father
Nasrallah quoted Moussa al-Sadr, a prominent Lebanese Shiite cleric. And
during the funeral, another Shiite cleric in a white turban spoke from
the pulpit, quoting the Quran and the Bible and lauding the dead as
“martyrs for all of Lebanon.”

More
than 20,000 Syrians have settled in the area around Al Qaa, according
to local officials. Some rented empty apartments or farmhouses and took
jobs as day laborers, while local and church officials helped the least
fortunate secure basic services.

But the Syrians’ overwhelming numbers have made many nervous.

“We
welcomed them and helped them, thinking that it was a short-term
crisis,” said Mr. Nader of the town council. But as the war dragged on,
destroying Syrian towns, many began to worry that the Syrians would
never go home, he said, or that the extremism spreading in Syria would
erupt in Lebanon.

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Then,
on the morning of June 27, a father and son from the town’s only Muslim
family were eating the pre-dawn meal in preparation for the Ramadan
fast when they spotted a stranger in their garden. When they confronted
him, he blew himself up, wounding them both.

The
blast was so loud that some residents thought they were being bombed
from the air. When neighbors and the town’s ambulance rushed to the
site, another attacker targeted them, also blowing himself up. Then
another, and another.

Soon, the ambulance was smashed, five residents were dead, and others were on their way to the hospital.

That
evening, residents were outside the church preparing for the funerals
of the five killed in the morning when they saw a stranger approaching.
One of the residents shot him, and he blew up. Other attacks followed
near the church, a security office and an army vehicle, wounding dozens.

The
attacks baffled the town’s residents, as they have played no role in
the Syrian crisis. The Islamic State and the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda
both have a presence across the border in Syria and regularly carry out
suicide bombings. No group has claimed responsibility.

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But
the blasts inflamed tempers in a country drowning in refugees. Some
politicians have gone on television to call for the refugees to be sent
home or to be detained in camps. The anger in Al Qaa, too, has focused
on the Syrians.

“Now,
people won’t accept that the situation continues like this,” Mr. Nader
said. “I welcomed you, and you hit the hand that I extended.”

The
price for some refugees in Al Qaa was swift. Residents told them that
they had 72 hours to get out, and no Syrians appeared on the streets on
Wednesday. A group of shacks where refugees had lived on the edge of
town stood empty, the locks on their doors broken and chickens left
behind pecking at the dust.

The
morning blasts had woken up the Juma family, who had fled Syria for
Lebanon three years earlier and rented a simple two-room farmhouse in Al
Qaa, where the parents lived with their four children. Once they
learned there had been an attack, they expected the worst.

“As soon as I heard that the explosions were here, I said, ‘It’s over,’” Fariha Juma, the mother, said.

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A
day later, a group of local men looking for a suspicious person
detained a group of Syrians including her husband, Abdul-Moti. They
pulled the refugees’ shirts over their heads, bound their hands and beat
their heads and chests.

“For sure, there is a broken bone,” Mr. Juma said, wincing with one hand on his ribs and a bright red abrasion on his cheek.

A
Syrian family next door had already packed its belongings but had
nowhere to go. None of the members of the family had legal residency in
Lebanon, meaning they could be detained if they tried to cross security
checkpoints.

Their
landlord, Tony Matar, said he understood the anger of his fellow
townspeople. His son was wounded in the attacks and was still in the
hospital. Even so, he said it could be disastrous if they turned on the
refugees.

“There
are those who benefited the village and those who hurt it,” Mr. Matar
said. “The problem now is that people talk as if all the Syrians are
responsible.”