Lebanese troops directed artillery and tank barrages at al-Qaeda-inspired militants dug in at a Palestinian refugee camp on Sunday, the third day of an intensified assault to crush the gunmen.
After 12 days of sporadic shelling, the army on Friday attacked Fatah al-Islam positions at the entrances of the camp with the declared aim of wiping out the militants.
The fighting, which erupted on May 20, is Lebanon’s worst internal violence since the 1975/1990 civil war. About 110 people have been killed so far and thousands of refugees have fled their homes.
The government says militants triggered the siege by attacking army positions around the camp and in Lebanon’s second largest city, Tripoli.
In an indication that violence could engulf other parts of Lebanon, Islamist militants attacked an army checkpoint at another camp, Ain al-Hilweh in south Lebanon.
That attack sparked fierce exchanges of rifle fire and grenades between soldiers and Jund al-Islam militants, witnesses said. The army later brought in reinfocements and deployed armoured vehicles mounted with heavy machine guns.
They said two people were wounded and scores of people, with their belongings in plastic bags, were fleeing the scene. At least one shop and a home at the edge of the camp were on fire.
In northern Lebanon, troops seized and destroyed several positions of the Fatah al-Islam group and tightened their siege of the Nahr al-Bared camp, which lies 100km north of Beirut.
But the militants there, who have vowed to fight to the death, put up stiff resistance despite three days of near constant pounding from army tanks, artillery and gunships, and fought back with mortar bombs and rocket-propelled grenades.
”If the army continues attacking, Nahr al-Bared will be, God willing, a graveyard for them,” Abu Hurayra, one of the group’s senior members, told Reuters by telephone from inside the camp.
Machine gun fire and shelling reverberated over Nahr al-Bared, while plumes of smoke rose from bombed-out buildings.
Since Friday the shelling has devastated large parts of the camp, levelling buildings used by the gunmen to fire at troops but also destroying many civilian homes.
”There is no square metre that has not been hit by a shell,” one camp resident told Reuters by telephone. ”We can’t leave the building we are in, let alone the street, to find out the full extent of the devastation.”
An army source said the militants had fired at least two grenades at army positions from a mosque inside the camp.
Security sources said 10 soldiers had been killed since Friday. Palestinian sources said a militant commander, Naim Ghali aka Abu Riyadh, was killed by an army sniper on Saturday.
Since Friday, more than 16 people — militants and civilians — have died in the camp. The group said it lost five fighters.
The total death toll stands at about 111, of whom 45 are soldiers, at least 36 are militants and at least 20 are civilians.
At least 25 000 of Nahr al-Bared’s 40,000 population have fled to other refugee camps over the past two weeks.
Lebanon’s anti-Syrian government says Fatah al-Islam is a Syrian tool, but Damascus denies any links to the group and says its leader, Shaker al-Abssi, is on Syria’s wanted list. Abssi and his comrades say they are inspired by al-Qaeda’s ideology.
Lebanon has been split by a seven-month-old political crisis over the opposition’s demands for more say in government. The opposition includes Syria’s allies, led by Hezbollah.
Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said the militants must surrender and give up their arms, which Fatah al-Islam has rejected.
While the army has not entered the camp’s official boundaries, it has captured the militants’ positions on its outskirts, confining militants to about a third of the camp.
A 1969 agreement prevents the army from entering Lebanon’s 12 Palestinian camps, home to 400 000 refugees. – Reuters