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Lebanese army pounds guerrillas
12/07/2007 21:29 - (SA)
Nahr Al-Bared - Six Lebanese soldiers were killed on Thursday during a heavy assault on a refugee camp the army says signals the "first step" in a final battle against Islamist fighters holed up there for almost eight weeks.
Vast clouds of black smoke billowed into the sky over the Nahr al-Bared camp as shells slammed relentlessly into the ruins of the shantytown where Fatah al-Islam guerrillas have been locked in a deadly standoff with the army since May 20.
"Today's bombardment is a first step in the final battle against the terrorist group whose fighters have refused to surrender to the army," said an army officer at the scene.
An army spokesperson said six soldiers were killed in battle on Thursday, the 54th day of the deadliest internal fighting in Lebanon since the 1975-1990 civil war that has further shaken security in the deeply divided country.
Water and food are in short supply
Medical sources said an officer was killed by sniper fire while two soldiers fell in an ambush by Sunni Muslim gunmen on the edge of the southern part of Nahr al-Bared. Three other soldiers were killed in unknown circumstances.
A civilian was killed by a stray bullet as he was walking on a road near the camp, while at least 30 soldiers were injured, said hospital officials.
The latest deaths brought to 181 the number of people killed, including 92 soldiers and at least 68 Islamists, since the fighting first erupted at Nahr al-Bared and the nearby Mediterranean port city of Tripoli.
Lebanese artillery was in action since daybreak, striking positions of the Al-Qaeda-inspired Fatah al-Islam militia in the south of the camp, where a few hundred people are still believed to be living although water and food are in short supply.
First anniversary of the devastating war
Shells crashed into some of the few bombed-out buildings still standing in the seafront camp, which has been left in ruins, with houses shattered and collapsed like packs of cards, vehicles burnt out and empty streets sprayed with chunks of rubble.
A news correspondent said elite Lebanese soldiers were also locked in gunbattles with the Islamists in the southern and eastern sectors of the camp.
The latest bombardment comes on the first anniversary of the devastating war between Israel and the Shi'ite militia Hezbollah which killed more than 1 200 people in Lebanon alone.
Military reinforcements were brought in overnight after more than 150 people, mostly Palestinian militants, fled the camp on Wednesday amid signs the army was readying for a final assault against the die-hard Islamists.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Fuad Siniora called for the army to "put a final end" to the Fatah al-Islam "terrorists", in an apparent green light to storm the camp.
Relief workers have been unable to deliver supplies into the camp since June 20, forcing remaining residents to scavenge for food and water in abandoned houses.
'Drinking from an artesian well'
Almost all of the camp's original population of about 31 000 people fled during lulls in the battle.
At the nearby Beddawi camp, to where most of the displaced have been evacuated, Jumana Wehbe who fled Nahr al-Bared on Wednesday described conditions in the besieged shantytown.
"The few people remaining in the camp have been drinking from an artesian well, and from water tanks," she said. "They eat the remains of what people leaving the camp left behind."
Wehbe, in her mid-30s, who survived in a security zone set up by the mainstream Palestinian group Fatah, described the Fatah al-Islam militants as "fanatics" who regarded a loud woman's voice as contrary to Islam.
"They are in every street and narrow path ... They would gather in hundreds to bury one of their killed fighters," said Wehbe.
Different Arab nationalities
"We baked our own bread and ate once a day," added another new evacuee, Samir Radi, a carpenter and Fatah militant.
Samar Hindi, 18, who arrived in Beddawi more than a month ago to seek refuge in a packed room with more than 10 others, said: "When we left, we carried nothing with us. We thought, like our parents did in 1948, that we were going back in two or three days."
The fighting erupted when the Islamists, who are of different Arab nationalities, launched a string of attacks on soldiers, killing 27 of them around the camp and in nearby Tripoli.
- SAPA
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