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Islamist posts 'destroyed'
20/06/2007 14:05 - (SA)
Nahr Al-Bared, Lebanon - The Lebanese army on Wednesday said it has seized all the main positions of its Islamist foes in a besieged refugee camp, exactly a month after the launch of a showdown with Fatah al-Islam.
"All the buildings in the new part of the camp where the terrorists were dug in have been taken, and one could say fighting has stopped in this area," an army officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The new part of Nahr al-Bared camp is an overspill roughly the same size as the original Palestinian refugee camp, whose perimeter was fixed in 1948 by the United Nations and where all the buildings were of one-storey only.
The northern overspill contains high-rise concrete buildings overlooking the road to the Syrian border, and it is there that diehard Sunni Muslim extremists of al-Qaeda inspited Fatah al-Islam have pulled back to make a last stand.
Wednesday morning saw a lull in the fighting a day after heavy guns pounded suspected militant strongholds in the northern sector. Three soldiers were killed on Tuesday but Fatah al-Islam casualties were not known.
So far at least 141 people, including 74 soldiers, have been killed in the deadliest internal violence since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war that comes amid increasing political and security insecurity in deeply-divided Lebanon.
'We are advancing metre by metre...'
Apart from the occasional burst of automatic gunfire, the Lebanese army's tanks and artillery ranged on high ground overlooking the camp were silent on Wednesday.
"We are advancing metre by metre and are securing the new camp quarter by quarter because of the threat of mines," the army officer said.
The northern part of Nahr al-Bared lining the coast is now a wasteland of shattered concrete skeletons and fallen slabs where the military is edging forward.
Since the weekend the army says it has destroyed or overrun six Fatah al-Islam outposts and found "the bodies of several armed elements which had been apparently prepared for burial at the abandoned positions".
On Sunday, army chief Brigadier General Michel Sleiman predicted an end to the siege within days.
While the Beirut government and the military appear determined to end the stand-off by force, Palestinian mediators are continuing to try to negotiate a ceasefire.
Mohammed Hajj, spokesperson for mediators trying to convince the Islamists to surrender, said on Wednesday that the "deployment of a Palestinian force between the two sides in the old camp is imperative if the fighting is to end".
He said a meeting with the army was expected later "to fix the details of setting up this force" which would protect the about 2 000 refugees still inside the camp and prevent remaining militants from escaping.
- AFP
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