BEIRUT, September 3, (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Lebanese and Palestinian refugee officials denied Tuesday a report in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz that Syria permitted more than 150 al-Qaida activists to enter the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh in southern Lebanon.

“This is a matter of lies peddled by Israel and the United States. There are no al-Qaida members in Lebanon,” Information Minister Ghazi Aradi said, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

“Besides those who have declared a war on terrorism have paid tribute to Syria's contribution,” he added, in a reference to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs William Burns' comment on June 18 that Syrian intelligence had helped to save American lives.

The local chief of Fatah movement in Ain El-Helweh also categorically rejected the Ha’aretz report.

There “are no members of Al-Qaida in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon,” Munir Maqdah said.

“The Israelis peddle these lies to take away attention from their failure to subdue the Intifada,” he added.

Damascus has allowed some 150-200 members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida group to settle in Ain el-Helweh, Ha’aretz alleged Monday, September 2.

Citing “various intelligence services”, the Tel Aviv daily said the group, including senior commanders, had arrived from Afghanistan through Damascus, Iran and directly to Lebanon, AFP reported.

The commander of Palestinian Armed Struggle, Abu Ali Tanios, on Monday, denied reports that Al-Qaida members had entered any Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.

Speaking in Ain al-Hilweh, Tanios said members of the Palestinian Armed Struggle, deployed throughout the camp and monitored the entrances of the camp 24 hours a day, did not notice any unknown people entering, the Lebanese based The Daily Star reported.

“Our patrols do not take a break and there are checkpoints at the camp entrances,” he said. “So I wonder how such people were able to enter the camp, unless they grew wings to fly in,” the paper said.

Like camp officials, residents were dismissive. Residents of the camp, numbering over 70,000, expressed surprise at the latest foreign claims that hundreds of Al-Qaida members were currently in the camp and unanimously denied the claims.

Mahmoud Hani, who sells butane gas canisters, argued that “to arrive in Lebanon, the Al-Qaeda members must have crossed several Arab countries. Wouldn’t they have trouble crossing those borders?

“This is completely untrue and just media talk,” he said.

Another resident, Hajja Itaf Miari, said the world “had nothing to think about but Ain al-Hilweh.”

“This is a pack of lies because everybody knows everybody else in the camp. There are no foreigners here,” she said.

She added that if there was anything suspicious, people in the camp would have talked about it. If a woman has a baby, she added, “everyone in the neighborhood knows about it,” the daily reported.

In a related development, an informed Palestinian source said Monday that the reports about Al-Qaeda members in Ain al-Hilweh were an attempt to target Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian refugee camps as a prelude to a large-scale Israeli attack following Sunday’s attack in the occupied Shebaa Farms, in which an Israeli soldier was killed and two others wounded.

The source added that any Israeli attack against the three targets would “easily enjoy U.S. and international support.”

“This is not the first time the camp has been targeted in light of Israel’s failure to achieve its objectives,” the source added.