 |
Palestinian sources in the camp fear the toll would rise because rescue workers could not reach some areas. (Reuters) |
NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon — Continued clashes between the Lebanese army and militants holding up inside Nahr al-Bared refugees camp were Monday, May 21, taking their toll on innocent Palestinian refugees, killing at least nine of them and leaving thousands in harm's way.
"The army shells which hit several houses in Nahr Al-Bared have killed nine civilian refugees and wounded more than 70 others," an official at the Palestinian Medical Center in the camp told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Lebanese tanks pounded the coastal camp, home to nearly 40,000 Palestinian refugees, and plumes of black smoke rose from the camp, an AFP photographer at the scene said.
Troops exchanged artillery and machinegun fire with militants of the shadow Fatah al-Islam group.
Security sources said warships also patrolled the waters off Nahr al-Bared to prevent the group from sending in reinforcements.
Witnesses said mosque imams called by loudspeakers for the army to stop shelling the camp, one of a dozen across Lebanon, reported Reuters.
Palestinian sources in the camp fear the toll would rise because rescue workers could not reach some areas.
Lebanese Red Cross ambulances evacuated 20 wounded from the camp overnight, following an appeal for humanitarian access.
Buildings in the impoverished shantytown along the northern highway leading to Syria have been burnt or destroyed in the fighting.
The latest fatalities bring to 65 the number of army soldiers, militants and civilians killed since the clashes flared up Sunday, May 20.
Sunday's battles at Nahr al-Bared and in the nearby city of Tripoli killed 27 soldiers, 15 militants and 15 civilians -- Lebanon's worst internal fighting since the 1975-1990 civil war.
On Alert
Fatah al-Islam, which is thought to have only a few hundred fighters, was threatened to take the battle to other parts of Lebanon if the army did not halt its shelling, reported Al-Jazeera news channel.
Lebanon's over-stretched army of 40,000 may not enter the country's Palestinian refugee camps under a 1969 Arab accord.
The army said the fighting was triggered when the militants staged an attack on a military post outside Nahr al-Bared.
A senior security official told AFP that government forces found the bodies of 10 militants, including Saddam Hajj Dib who was wanted over a plot to blow up trains in Germany last July, in the building stormed on Sunday.
Another was identified as Abu Yazan, the number three of Fatah Al-Islam, who the official said was directly responsible for twin bus bombings in a Christian village in the mountains outside Beirut in February that killed three people.
Security forces also found cheques stolen on Saturday in a bank robbery in the northern town of Amyun where more than 100,000 dollars were stolen.
Local media reported that Arab nationals were among the casualties in the ranks of Fatah Al-Islam.
Tripoli, Lebanon's second biggest city, was quiet but schools and universities were closed.
Schools also shut in the sprawling Ain al-Hilweh camp near the southern city of Sidon in protest at the fighting in the north.
In Beirut, an explosion near a popular shopping mall in the mainly Christian east of the capital killed a woman and wounded 10 people on Sunday night, a security source said.
No group has claimed the attack and it was not clear if it was linked to the fighting in the north.
Lebanese authorities have accused Fatah al-Islam, a splinter group said to be ideologically close to Al-Qaeda, of working for the Syrian intelligence services, which Damascus has denied.
The group, which denies any organizational links to Al-Qaeda, has accused the government of trying to pave the way for an offensive against Palestinian camps in Lebanon.
|
