Bombs Falling in Lebanon

[Christina]

Lebanese Cut Power and Water, Then Shell 'Palestinian Camp' by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz(IsraelNN.com) In the wake of clashes with a Syrian-affiliated terrorist organization operating in Lebanon, Fatah Al-Islam, the Lebanese government ordered services cut to the northern town the terrorists are using as their base of operations. The Lebanese army also shelled the town, which is designated by Lebanon as a "Palestinian refugee camp." Residents of the camp told reporters that many homes have been demolished and bodies were strewn in the streets.By Monday morning, the clashes between Fatah Al-Islam and the Lebanese military had led to the deaths of at least 22 soldiers, 25 Islamist terrorists and uncounted numbers of non-combatants in Nahr Al-Bard and Tripoli, Lebanon's second-largest city, as well as in Beirut. Some estimates put the total death toll at 65. The clashes between Lebanese security forces and the Fatah Al-Islam terrorists erupted in Tripoli, when soldiers raided a terrorist safe-house in pursuit of bank robbers on Sunday. "We traced them to an apartment in Tripoli, which turned out to be an office for Fatah Al-Islam," Interior Security Forces chief Ashraf Rifi said. The government troops were met by armed resistance, which quickly led to fierce clashes in Tripoli and in the Fatah Al-Islam home base of Nahr Al-Bard. As an early tactic in their war against the Islamist group, the Lebanese authorities cut off electricity, water and communications in the Nahr Al-Bard camp. In response to a successful Fatah Al-Islam assault on nearby military outposts on Sunday, army tanks shelled the camp intermittently throughout the day. Army sources claimed the shells were aimed at Fatah Al-Islam headquarters, while residents of the camp told reporters that many homes in the camp have been randomly demolished and bodies were strewn in the streets. The shelling continued on Monday. Within hours of the worst of Sunday's clashes, a car bomb exploded outside a shopping mall in a central-eastern Beirut neighborhood. One woman was killed and dozens were injured when a bomb placed under a car in the mall parking lot was detonated by unknown terrorists. The neighborhood is known to be majority Christian. The Lebanese cabinet is meeting Monday to decide whether or not to send troops into Nahr Al-Bard.Reactions Among Lebanese and in the Palestinian Authority Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora said the fighting was a "dangerous attempt at harming Lebanese security." Lebanese civilians have expressed to various media outlets their strong support for their military's assault against the Islamists in the Nahr Al-Bard camp. Pictures in several on-line newspapers show Lebanese citizens in the streets cheering on soldiers making their way through the streets of Tripoli. Elias Bejjani, chairman of a Lebanese expatriate coalition in Canada, the Lebanese -Canadian Coordinating Council (LCCC), issued a press release calling for the Lebanese military "to deal decisively and with military means with the situation in the Nahr El-Bared Camp once and for all, because not doing so will weaken the army and give the Lebanese opposition and those behind them in the Syrian regime a new impetus to repeat what happened several times in the past." The LCCC further claimed, "The rulers in Damascus had brought in its mercenary fighters several months ago to the Palestinian Camps in Lebanon with the objective of stirring strife, creating an anarchy situation, obstructing the creation of the International Tribunal [on the assassination of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri -ed.] and, most importantly, prevent the rise of a strong self-reliant Lebanese State and institutions that would spread its control over every inch of Lebanese soil and disarm the militias and impose the rule of law." Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah organization denied any connection with Fatah Al-Islam and has condemned the current clashes in Lebanon. However, Fatah Al-Islam is an offshoot of factions that split with Yasser Arafat's Fatah in the 1980s. Lebanese security officials have linked Fatah Al-Islam variously to Al-Qaeda and to Syrian intelligence.

 

[Christina]

Dozens Killed in Lebanese FightingLebanese Army Tightens Siege of Palestinian Refugee Camp As Clashes ContinueBy BASSEM MROUEThe Associated PressTRIPOLI, Lebanon Lebanese troops tightened a siege of a Palestinian refugee camp Monday where a shadowy group suspected of ties to al-Qaida was holed up, pounding the camp with artillery a day after the worst eruption of violence since the end of the country's 1975-90 civil war. Lebanese officials said one of the men killed in Sunday's fighting was a suspect in a failed German train bombing a new sign that the camp had become a refuge for militants planning attacks outside of Lebanon. In the past, others in the camp have said they were aiming to send trained fighters into Iraq.Saddam El-Hajdib was the fourth-highest ranking official in the Fatah Islam group, an official said Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. El-Hajdib had been on trial in absentia in Lebanon in connection with the failed German plot.The death toll remained uncertain as hundreds of Lebanese army troops, backed by tanks and armored carriers, surrounded the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp on Tripoli's outskirts early Monday. M-48 battle tanks unleashed their cannon fire on the camp, sending orange flames followed by white plumes of smoke. The militants fired mortars toward the troops at daybreak Monday.At least 27 soldiers and 20 militants had been killed, Lebanese security officials said Monday, but they did not know how many civilians had been killed inside the camp because it is off-limits to their authority.One official in the camp said a total of 34 people had been killed inside the camp, including 14 civilians. But that could not be independently confirmed and other estimates of civilian deaths were lower.An army officer at the frontline, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said troops directed concentrated fire at buildings known to house militants."Everything we know that they were present in has been targeted," he told The Associated Press.Ahmed Methqal, a Muslim cleric in the camp, told al-Jazeera television by phone that sniper fire had confined the camp's 30,000 residents to their houses and that five civilians had been killed."They are targeting buildings, with people in them," he said. "What's the guilt of children, women and the elderly?"Mohammed Hanafi, identified by al-Jazeera as a human rights activist in the camp, said a total of 34 people had been killed and 150 wounded.It was unclear if Lebanese authorities had known El-Hajdib's whereabouts, or the whereabouts of the group's leader, before a gunbattle first broke out in Tripoli, a predominantly Sunni city known to have Islamic militants, witnesses said. After the first street fighting, the army began its siege of the nearby camp.But Lebanon has struggled to defeat armed groups that control pockets of Lebanon especially inside the country's 12 Palestinian refugee camps housing 350,000 people, which Lebanese authorities can't enter.Some camps have become havens for Islamic militants accused of carrying out attacks in the country and of sending recruits to fight U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq.Palestinian officials in the West Bank rushed to distance themselves from the Fatah Islam group and urged Palestinian refugees in the camp to isolate the militant group, which first set up in the northern Lebanese camp last fall after its leader was released from a Syrian jail.The group's leader, a Palestinian named Shaker al-Absi wanted in three countries, said in a March interview with The New York Times that he was trying to spread al-Qaida's ideology and was training fighters inside the camp for attacks on other countries.He would not specify which countries but expressed anger toward the United States. And he was sentenced to death earlier in absentia along with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq killed last summer by U.S. forces in Iraq, for the 2002 assassination of an American diplomat in Jordan.Al-Absi had been in custody in Syria until last fall but was released and set up in the camp, where he apparently found some recruits, Lebanese officials said.The Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. TV station reported Sunday that also among the dead militants also were men from Bangladesh, Yemen and other Arab countries, underlining the group's reach outside of Lebanon.Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said Sunday the fighting was a "dangerous attempt at hitting Lebanese security."Major Palestinian factions have dissociated themselves from the group. Lebanese Sunni political and religious leaders backed the army and the government.Meanwhile, in Beirut late Sunday, an explosion across the street from a busy shopping mall killed a 63-year-old woman and injured 12 other people in the Christian sector of the Lebanese capital further raising fears of unrest, police said.Beirut and surrounding suburbs have seen a series of explosions in the last two years, many targeting Christian areas. Authorities blamed Fatah Islam for Feb. 13 bombings of commuter buses that killed three people, but the group denied involvement.Syria has denied involvement in any of the bombings, but Lebanon's national police commander Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi said Sunday that Damascus was using the Fatah Islam group as a covert way to wreak havoc in the country.Associated Press Writer Hussein Dakroub in Beirut contributed to this report.