MIDDLE EAST:Fighting between Lebanese soldiers and radical militants is taking its toll on civilians trapped inside the Palestinian camp, writes Lucy Fielderin north Lebanon
Lebanese army tanks pounded a Palestinian refugee camp and answering volleys of shots from Sunni Muslim militants rang out at sunset yesterday, the second day of a fierce battle in which at least 79 people have been killed.
Fighting engulfed the coastal Nahr al-Bared camp, just outside the northern city of Tripoli, and a pall of black smoke slowly spread out to sea. Twenty-nine soldiers have been killed in Lebanon's worst internal fighting since the 1975-1990 civil war, and at least 12 civilians. The rest of the dead belonged to the radical group Fatah al-Islam.
Although the Lebanese representative of the Palestinian faction Islamic Jihad said that a truce had been agreed, sporadic gunfire could be heard last night.
Doctors at a nearby Palestinian camp hospital said yesterday afternoon that the humanitarian situation in the crowded camp was desperate and the army and militants had agreed a two-hour ceasefire to let the United Nations and Red Cross send in ambulances, food and water.
Shortly after they spoke, however, the battles resumed with more intensity, preventing entry of the convoy.
Fighting between soldiers outside and militants hidden inside was taking its toll on ordinary Palestinians trapped in the camp, which packs 40,000 people into less than 2km. Thousands fled their homes, scores of which have been destroyed, to huddle together inside the camp.
In a bed in a small ward of Safad Hospital, in the nearby Palestinian camp of Beddawi, 18-year-old Manal Touhan lay ashen-faced, her eyes half open. The corrugated iron roof of her home had imploded under yesterday's bombardment and a piece of it became embedded in her abdomen, her mother said.
"It's a tragedy, these are crimes. They're killing children. What did they do wrong?" said Saada Touhan, her eyes welling up. "The situation is too much for us to handle."
Saada's six other sons and daughters were still in the camp, but she feared most for her young grandchildren.
"There's no water or food. I had to go around and ask my neighbours if they had anything left over for the young ones to eat," she said.
A young woman in the neighbouring bed, injured in the leg by shelling as she ran home from her neighbours' place, cursed Fatah al-Islam for setting up in the camp late last year. "Since the day they came the whole world turned upside down for us," Muntaha Saeed said.
Fatah al-Islam emerged in November and has about 300 members and an al-Qaeda-style ideology. It is unclear if it has links with other Palestinian groups and many of its members are reported to be from elsewhere in the region. The group came under the spotlight when four of its members were arrested and accused of twin bus-bombings in a Christian area north of Beirut in February.
Street battles erupted at dawn on Sunday after the internal security forces attempted a raid to arrest suspected bank robbers linked to Fatah al-Islam, who had made away with $120,000 the day before. Gunmen overran army positions, but the military, forbidden under a 1969 deal from entering Palestinian camps, fought them on the streets, tightened its grip on the camp and shelled positions inside.
Lebanese ministers accused Syria of arming Fatah al-Islam and "exporting" it to Lebanon. They say that their neighbour wants to stir up trouble to thwart an international tribunal trying suspects in the killing of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri two years ago. Syria denies involvement in that or a string of subsequent assassinations which have shaken Lebanon to the core. Damascus said yesterday that it had no links with Fatah al-Islam.
In the capital, Beirut, a bomb in an upmarket shopping centre in the mainly Christian area of Achrafieh killed a woman and added to fears that Lebanon was slipping into chaos.
An explosion rocked a parking lot in the mainly Sunni Muslim district of Verdun in Beirut yesterday evening, witnesses said. The explosion set cars on fire +and broke the windows of some buildings. At least seven people were wounded.
Timur Goksel, an adviser to the UN force in south Lebanon, said that the army appeared to have run out of options and was in a no-win situation, with no one in power willing or able to risk authorising entering the camp to fight Fatah al-Islam.
"At the moment, other Palestinian groups are standing back, but a major operation could ignite a war with them that would spread to camps all over the country," he said. - (Reuters)