LEBANON:The Lebanese army shelled a Palestinian refugee camp for a third day yesterday in an attempt to destroy an Islamist militant group holed up inside, but Palestinian anger grew with the civilian death toll.
A fragile truce between the army and Fatah al-Islam was holding in the early evening to allow a convoy of UN Relief and Works Agency humanitarian aid into the coastal Nahr El-Bared camp, outside the northern city of Tripoli. Shells landed close to the convoy, killing two youths collecting supplies, according to Reuters.
An exodus of thousands of exhausted civilians, young and old, streamed out of Nahr El-Bared to walk about five kilometres to Beddawi camp to seek shelter in schools there, said Georges Kettaneh, Lebanese Red Cross head of rescue operations. "We are trying to help them but there are too many, too many," he said.
At least 27 civilians, 32 soldiers and 22 militants have been killed in Lebanon's worst internal fighting since the 1975-1990 civil war. With fleeing civilians and the dead lying on streets and trapped under the rubble of shelled buildings, the death toll can only rise.
Sporadic gunfire shook the truce but the army held back from the shelling that has reduced many homes and at least two mosques to rubble, according to witnesses. "If Fatah al-Islam ceases fire, you will not hear fire from the army," a military source said.
Talks between a delegation of leading Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas, smaller groups, the government and army command were proving tough, the source said. For a ceasefire, the army demands that the Palestinian mediators, who have no apparent links with the militia, arrest and hand over Fatah al-Islam elements who attacked the army.
Lebanon's army cannot enter the country's 12 Palestinian camps under a 1969 deal and storming the camp only risks killing many civilians.
Yesterday's shelling was some of the fiercest yet in the stand-off, which broke out at dawn on Sunday with an internal security forces raid on the Tripoli hideout of Fatah Al-Islam members accused of a bank robbery.
Palestinians burned tyres in the southern camps of Ain El-Hilweh and Rachidieh in the south, increasing fears of widespread Palestinian fury if the Nahr El-Bared civilians remain under fire.
Two bomb blasts within 24 hours in central areas of Beirut added to the sense that Lebanon was on the brink. Monday night's bomb blast injured 10 people in the shopping district of Verdun; a woman was killed in Sunday's car bomb in wealthy Achrafieh. A statement purporting to be from Fatah Al-Islam claimed responsibility, but its spokesman Abu Salim denied any connection with the bombs. Lebanese people are divided over whether Fatah Al-Islam planted the bombs in a warning to the army or that Syria was trying to thwart an international court inquiry into the 2005 killing of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri. There is also conjecture that a a third party is seeking either to frame Syria or show solidarity with the Islamists.
Mr Hariri's son, Saad, billionaire leader of the parliamentary majority, has called Fatah Al-Islam, which has little local support, even among Palestinians, a "Syrian export" , but both the group and Damascus deny the claims. Some contend Mr Hariri turned the rag-tag militia of a few score into the 300-strong force that held off the army for three days.
Fatah al-Islam splintered from a Syrian-supported militia last November, said Ahmed Moussalli, a Lebanese expert on Islamists at the American University of Beirut. But Mr Hariri and his Saudi Arabian backers funnelled money to Fatah al-Islam and other Sunni Muslim extremists hoping to create a Sunni militia to counter Hizbullah.
Respected US investigative reporter Seymour Hersh drew the same conclusion in a March piece for the New Yorker.
"It started as a split from pro-Syrian Fatah Intifadah but it evolved to al-Qaeda-type cells," Mr Moussalli said. "That was funded by the Sunni leadership in Lebanon. Now the Americans are asking the Sunnis to clamp down on such groups because they want to negotiate with Iran on Iraq," he said.