Lebanese troops bombarded a Palestinian refugee camp with artillery and tank fire on Monday, pressing ahead with an assault to crush al-Qaeda-inspired militants dug in there.
But after 23 days of often ferocious fighting at the Nahr al-Bared camp, the army did not appear any closer to forcing the Fatah al-Islam group to surrender.
A cloud of smoke hung over the camp as scores of heavy artillery rounds crashed into the camp, while tank and heavy machine-gun fire strafed suspected militant hide-outs.
The militants hit back with sporadic attacks of mortar bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. Lebanon’s army is not allowed into Palestinian camps under the terms of a 1969 Arab agreement.
A resident at the camp said by telephone that two civilians were killed in Monday’s shelling.
At least 130 people have been killed, including 57 soldiers, in three weeks of fighting, the worst internal clashes since Lebanon’s 1975 to 1990 civil war. Eleven soldiers died and more than 100 were wounded in battles on the weekend alone.
Rescue workers have been unable to give an accurate death toll because of the difficulty of moving in the camp — a sprawling warren of alleyways on the Mediterranean — but at least 42 militants and 31 civilians have been killed.
The army says the militants triggered the conflict by attacking its positions around the camp and on the outskirts of the nearby city of Tripoli. Fatah al-Islam says it acted in self defence and has vowed to fight to the death.
The fighting has further undermined stability in Lebanon, already paralysed by a seven-month-old political crisis.
Deadly clashes erupted last week in the south at the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, and five bombs have targeted civilian areas in and near Beirut since May 20.
Lebanese and Palestinian Islamist politicians and clerics have so far failed to broker an end to the conflict.
Most of Nahr al-Bared’s estimated 40 000 residents have fled to other nearby refugee camps. About 80 more left on Monday.
About 400 000 Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon, roughly half in 12 camps.
In eastern Lebanon, security forces arrested four people on suspicion of belonging to an Islamist militant group, security sources said. The arrests were part of a crackdown in the Bekaa Valley following the arrest of three Arab al-Qaeda members last week in possession of weapons and explosives.
Monday’s arrests brought to more than 13 the number of people detained in the case. — Reuters