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Qaeda 'will expand camp war'
06/06/2007 18:45 - (SA)
Nahr al-Bared - Al-Qaeda-inspired militants in north Lebanon threatened on Wednesday to take their fight to other parts of Lebanon and beyond if the Lebanese army did not stop attacking a Palestinian refugee camp.
"If the army continues to bomb civilians and pursue its inhumane practices we will move within the next two days to the second phase of the battle," Fatah al-Islam military commander Shahin Shahin said by telephone.
"We will show them the capabilities of Fatah al-Islam, starting with Lebanon and then moving to the whole of Greater Syria," he said, using a term intended to include what is now Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Lebanese troops fired artillery and tank shells overnight and in the morning at Fatah al-Islam militants holed up in the coastal Nahr al-Bared camp, the 18th day of battles there.
At least 114 people, including 46 soldiers and 38 militants, have been killed since fighting erupted on May 20. The army says the militants started the conflict and demands their surrender.
The battles are Lebanon's deadliest internal conflict since the 1975-1990 civil war.
Sharing ideologies
In south Lebanon, a 40-member force from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah group and three Islamist factions deployed at the northern entrance of Ain al-Hilweh camp, scene of deadly clashes this week between the army and the militant Jund al-Sham group, which has links to Fatah al-Islam.
Palestinian factions, including Fatah and the Islamist Hamas group, oppose Fatah al-Islam, which shares al-Qaeda's ideology of global jihad and recruits fighters from other Arab countries.
In eastern Lebanon, security forces arrested three suspected al-Qaeda members in possession of weapons and explosives, security sources said.
The three men, arrested at a flat in Bar Elias village, also had forged travel and identity documents, computers, maps of Lebanese cities and night-time binoculars.
Fatah al-Islam made its base in Nahr al-Bared where it could function beyond the reach of the state, which is not allowed into Palestinian camps in Lebanon under a 1969 Arab agreement.
A jolt to stability
About 27 000 of Nahr al-Bared's 40 000 refugees have fled, many of them to the nearby Beddawi camp.
UNRWA, the UN agency that cares for Palestinian refugees, has launched an appeal for $12.7m to meet the urgent needs of the displaced.
The United States, which sent ammunition and other equipment to the army after the conflict started, said it would donated $3.5m to the appeal.
The violence is the latest jolt to stability in Lebanon. Four bombs have exploded in the Beirut area, killing one person and wounding dozens, since the Nahr al-Bared fighting began.
Fatah al-Islam last week accused the 13 000-strong UN force, which has a naval component, of shelling Nahr al-Bared from the sea, a charge denied by the peacekeepers.
- Reuters
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