Tripoli, Lebanon – A convoy of U.N. relief supplies was hit in a third day of fighting Tuesday between Lebanese troops and an Islamic militant group holed up in a crowded Palestinian refugee camp.
In two other refugee camps in Lebanon, angry Palestinians burned tires to protest the Lebanese army assault on the northern camp of Nahr el-Bared. The unrest heightened fears that the military’s attempt to crush the al-Qaida-inspired Fatah Islam could provoke a broader backlash among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in other refugee camps, where Islamic extremists have been growing in influence.
Overnight, the Lebanese government ordered the army to finish off the militants who have set up in Nahr el-Bared, where 31,000 Palestinian refugees live on the outskirts of the northern port of Tripoli. At least 50 combatants have been killed since fighting erupted Sunday.
Black smoke billowed from the area Tuesday amid artillery and machine gun exchanges between troops and militants. Lebanese troops skirmished with Fatah Islam fighters, trying to seize militant positions on the outskirts of the camp.
“There are dead and wounded on the road, inside the camp,” screamed a Lebanese woman, Amina Alameddine, who ran weeping from her home on the edge of the camp. She fled with her daughter and four other relatives after Fatah Islam fighters started shooting at the army from the roof of her house.
At the same time, Lebanese troops sought to flush out fighters hiding in Tripoli.
Soldiers raided a building where Fatah Islam militants were believed to be hiding out, blasting an apartment with grenades, gunfire and tear gas.
They found no one in the apartment, but hours later, while pursuing a militant, they ordered him to surrender. He dropped a pistol but then detonated an explosives belt on his body, police officials said. None of the troops was injured.
Reports emerged from Nahr el-Bared of heavy destruction from the three days of bombardment by Lebanese artillery and tanks and militants who returned fire with mortars and automatic weapons.
“The shelling is heavy, not only on our positions, but also on children and women.
Destruction is all over,” Fatah Islam spokesman Abu Salim Taha told The Associated Press by telephone from inside the camp.
A U.N. refugee official said dozens of buildings were believed demolished, with residents trapped inside. There was also word that food and medical supplies were running out. The reports could not be confirmed because officials and reporters could not enter the camp.
“The camp is being destroyed from inside,” a U.N. Relief and Works Agency staffer told the AP. “The construction is very weak and the houses are very close to each other.” “We have reports that there are dozens of homes that were destroyed with the residents inside. Truly people are under the rubble. This is no exaggeration,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
The militants have killed 29 soldiers since Sunday and about 20 of the fighters have also been killed. The number of civilian casualties is unknown because relief officials have had limited access.
Lebanese authorities do not enter the refugee camps under a nearly 40-year-old agreement with the Palestinians.
The tens of thousands of Palestinians live in two- or three-story white buildings on the camp’s densely packed narrow streets. Refugees have been hiding in their homes inside the camp and Palestinian officials there said nine civilians were killed Monday.
After a morning of battles, the camp briefly fell silent Tuesday afternoon. Taha said the militants called a unilateral cease-fire, but it collapsed within an hour and heavy exchanges of fire and several explosions were heard. It was not known which side started firing.
An UNRWA official said a pickup truck and a water tanker were caught between the lines of the two sides and hit as they entered the camp.
“There may have been some casualties, at least one,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. “We could not distribute everything,” he told the AP by telephone from the camp entrance.
The Lebanon representative of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which has been mediating a cease-fire, confirmed the relief effort had come under attack.
Speaking on Al-Jazeera television, Abu Imad Rifai said that while people were “trying to pick up food supplies for UNRWA, they were shelled and some were injured, some seriously.” Rifai said he did not know who had breached the cease-fire.
Earlier, Taleb al-Salhani of UNRWA said the agency scrambled to evacuate one of its employees, a Palestinian aid worker wounded Monday.
The army earlier stopped six UNRWA trucks, including a water tanker, saying it was too dangerous to enter the camp.
The government of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora appeared determined to pursue Fatah Islam. Lebanon’s Cabinet late Monday authorized the army to step up its campaign and “end the terrorist phenomenon that is alien to the values and nature of the Palestinian people,” Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said.
The Bush administration reaffirmed its support for Saniora’s government Tuesday and indicated it suspected Syrian involvement.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said the Fatah Islam militants want to disrupt the nation’s security and distract international attention from a U.N. effort to establish a special tribunal try suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut.
The United States “will not tolerate attempts by Syria, terrorist groups or any others to delay or derail Lebanon’s efforts to solidify its sovereignty or seek justice in the Hariri case,” Snow said.
Lebanese security officials accuse Syria of backing Fatah Islam to disrupt Lebanon.
The charges are denied by Syria, which controlled Lebanon until 2005 when its troops were forced to withdraw from the country following Hariri’s assassination.
The fighting, Lebanon’s worst internal violence since the 1975-90 civil war, has added yet another layer of instability to an uneasy balancing act among numerous sects and factions vying for power. Saniora’s government already faces a domestic political crisis, with the opposition led by Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah demanding its removal.
Dozens of refugees angered by the assault on Nahr el-Bared burned tires in protest in the southern camp of Ein el-Hilweh, Lebanon’s largest Palestinian camp. Protesters also burned tires in Rashidiyeh camp, farther south.
The protests raised the specter that Palestinians in Lebanon’s 11 other refugee camps could rise up in anger over the assault on Nahr el-Bared. The overcrowded camps – housing more than 215,000 refugees, out of a total of 400,000 Palestinians in Lebanon – are also home to many armed Palestinian factions who often battle each other and have seen a rising number of Islamic extremists.
Major Palestinian factions have distanced themselves from Fatah Islam, which arose here last year and touts itself as a Palestinian liberation movement. But many view it as a nascent branch of al-Qaida-style terrorism with ambitions of carrying out attacks around the region.
The group’s leader, Palestinian Shaker al-Absi, has been linked to the former head of al-Qaida in Iraq and is accused in the 2002 assassination of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan.
He moved into Nahr el-Bared last fall after being expelled from Syria, where he was in custody.
Since then, he is believed to have recruited about 100 fighters, including militants from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and other Arab countries, and he has said he follows the ideology of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Among the militants killed Sunday was a man suspected in a plot to bomb trains in Germany last year, according to Lebanese security officials.
Major Palestinian faction leaders met with Saniora for the second time in as many days. European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana arrived Tuesday in Beirut to discuss the crisis.
Late Monday, an explosion went off in a shopping area in a Sunni Muslim sector of Beirut, wrecking parked cars and injuring seven people – a day after a bomb in a Christian part of the capital killed a woman. The two bombings while the fighting was going on in Tripoli were highly unusual. Taha, the Fatah Islam spokesman, denied his group was behind them.
By Scheherezade Faramarzi
The Associated Press
Tripoli, Lebanon – Artillery and machine gun fire echoed around a crowded Palestinian refugee camp Tuesday for a third straight day as the Lebanese government ordered the army to finish off Islamic militants holed up inside.
Angry Palestinians burned car tires in two other refugee camps in an ominous sign that the trouble could spread across Lebanon.
The fighting between the Lebanese army and the al-Qaida inspired group Fatah Islam has raised fears of a backlash among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon’s other refugee camps, where Islamic extremists have been growing in influence.
At the Nahr el-Bared camp on the outskirts of the northern port of Tripoli, black smoke billowed from the area after artillery and machine gun exchanges between troops and militants.
A cease-fire declared in the afternoon by the militants collapsed within an hour as fighting resumed between Lebanese troops and militants holed up in the camp. It was the third failed attempt at a truce.
Inside the city of Tripoli, security forces moved in against a suspected Fatah Islam hide-out in an apartment building, witnesses said. After receiving a tip about armed men in an apartment, shots rang out at midmorning as security forces raided the building using tear gas. The apartment was gutted when the army threw in hand grenades, but apparently no one was caught.
The developments demonstrated the government’s determination to pursue an estimated 100 militants from Fatah Islam operating out of the camp where some 31,000 Palestinian refugees live. The militants have killed 29 soldiers since Sunday and about 20 of the fighters have also been killed, as well as an undetermined number of civilians.
Now there are fears Lebanon’s worst internal violence since the 1975-90 civil war could spread, adding yet another layer of instability to an uneasy balancing act among numerous sects and factions vying for power. Prime Minister Fuad Saniora’s Western-backed government already faces a domestic political crisis, with the opposition led by Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah demanding its removal.
Lebanon’s Cabinet late Monday authorized the army to step up its campaign and “end the terrorist phenomenon that is alien to the values and nature of the Palestinian people,” Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said.
Reports emerging from the camp spoke of heavy destruction with food and medical supplies running out. The reports could not be confirmed because officials and reporters could not enter. A U.N.
relief staffer reported of dozens of houses destroyed on top of families.
Meanwhile, dozens of angry Palestinians burned tires in the southern camp of Ein el-Hilweh, Lebanon’s largest. Protesters also burned tires in Rashidiyeh camp in the south.
Relief supplies could not enter Nahr el-Bared as the U.N. Relief and Works Agency scrambled to evacuate one of its employees, a Palestinian aid worker wounded Monday, Taleb al-Salhani of UNRWA said.
The army stopped six UNRWA trucks, including a water tanker, saying it was too dangerous to enter the camp. They were left parked by the roadside. Al-Salhani said he hoped for a cease-fire later in the day to allow the U.N. convoy through.
Lebanese authorities do not enter the refugee camps under a nearly 40-year-old agreement with the Palestinians.
Taha said Fatah Islam managed to repulse several attempts by Lebanese troops to advance on their positions inside the camp. But reporters at the scene said the army only pushed the militants from posts at the camp’s outskirts without actually entering it.
“The shelling is heavy, not only on our positions, but also on children and women. Destruction is all over,” Taha told the AP by telephone from inside the camp.
Refugees have been hiding in their homes inside the camp and Palestinian officials there said nine civilians were killed Monday.
The tens of thousands of Palestinians in the camp live in two- or three-story white buildings on densely packed narrow streets. It is one of more than 12 impoverished camps housing more than 215,000 refugees, out of a total of 400,000 Palestinians in Lebanon.
Major Palestinian factions have distanced themselves from Fatah Islam, which arose here last year and touts itself as a Palestinian liberation movement. But many view it as a nascent branch of al-Qaida-style terrorism with ambitions of carrying out attacks around the region.
The group’s leader, Palestinian Shaker al-Absi, has been linked to the former head of al-Qaida in Iraq and is accused in the 2002 assassination of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan. He moved into Nahr el-Bared last fall after being expelled from Syria, where he was in custody.
Since then, he is believed to have recruited about 100 fighters, including militants from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and other Arab countries, and he has said he follows the ideology of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Among the militants killed in fighting Sunday was a man suspected in a plot to bomb trains in Germany last year, according to Lebanese security officials.
Beirut security officials accuse Syria of backing Fatah Islam to disrupt Lebanon. The charges are denied by Syria, which controlled Lebanon until 2005 when its troops were forced to withdraw from the country following the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
Major Palestinian faction leaders met with Saniora for the second time in as many days. European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana arrived Tuesday in Beirut to discuss the crisis.
Mufti Salim Lababidi, a Sunni spiritual leader of Palestinians in Lebanon, denounced the shelling which he claimed has killed or wounded 100 civilians.
“There are a thousand ways to uproot Fatah Islam. … There are ways other than this,” he said on Al-Jazeera television.
Late Monday, an explosion went off in a shopping area in a Sunni Muslim sector of Beirut, wrecking parked cars and injuring seven people – a day after a bomb in a Christian part of the capital killed a woman. The confluence of two bombings while the fighting was going on in Tripoli was highly unusual.
Taha, the Fatah Islam spokesman, denied his group was behind the Beirut bombings.
The White House said it supports Saniora’s efforts to deal with the fighting, and the State Department defended the Lebanese army, saying it was working in a “legitimate manner” against “provocations by violent extremists” in the camp.
