Sporadic gunfire in north Lebanon as militants reject ultimatum

Tripoli – Sporadic gunfire erupted
Thursday inside the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp where Islamic militants
are holed up after refusing an ultimatum by Lebanon’s defense minister
to surrender or face a military onslaught.

Lebanon’s leader vowed to uproot the fighters.

Insurgents from the al-Qaida-inspired Fatah al-Islam militant group
barricaded in the Palestinian refugee camp vowed not to give up and to
fight any Lebanese assault.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, in an address to the nation, said that his government would stamp out Fatah al-Islam.

“We will work to root out and strike at terrorism, but we will
embrace and protect our brothers in the camps,” Siniora said in a
televised speech, insisting Lebanon has no quarrel with the 400,000
Palestinian refugees who live in the country.

Siniora said Fatah al-Islam is “a terrorist organization that claims
to be Islamic and to defend Palestine” and was “attempting to ride on
the suffering and the struggle of the Palestinian people.”

Meanwhile, it was not clear what sparked shooting in the camp
Thursday, as a truce appeared to hold since Tuesday afternoon. Half a
dozen soldiers followed by an armored car and a light vehicle headed
toward a forward army position at the camp’s northern entrance.

The army’s first checkpoints are some 500 yards from the buildings
on the edge of Nahr el-Bared. Militant positions begin farther down
inside the sprawling maze of houses.

Despite the volleys of automatic rifle fire, soldiers appeared
relaxed as they manned their checkpoints, some smoking cigarettes while
a pickup truck of refugees — mostly women and children — came out.

“How many times do we have to be displaced,” cried Palestinian
refugee Nohad Abdel-Al, clad in a black robe and a black headscarf.

“Have mercy on us! Have mercy on us,” she told the troops, holding an infant in her arms.

Her husband Bakri Abdel-Al said the family’s two-story house had
been destroyed and that they had decided to leave Thursday “because we
are now hearing the fighting will resume.”

“We’ve seen hell,” he said.

Lebanon’s government appeared to be preparing in case the showdown
sparks violence elsewhere in the country. In a sign of the danger, a
bomb exploded Wednesday night in the Aley mountain resort overlooking
Beirut, a 90-minute drive south of Nahr el-Bared. The blast, which
injured 16 people, was the third in the Beirut area since Sunday.

Police said all but two of the injured had been released from hospital.

Fatah Islam has denied responsibility for the bombings, but many Lebanese fear more blasts if the siege continues.

Storming the Nahr el-Bared camp — a densely built-up town of narrow
streets on the Mediterranean coast — could mean rough urban fighting
for Lebanese troops and further death and destruction for the thousands
of civilians who remain inside.

It could also have grave repercussions elsewhere across troubled
Lebanon, sparking unrest among the country’s estimated 400,000
Palestinian refugees. Already some of the other refugee camps in
Lebanon, which are rife with armed groups, are seething with anger over
the fighting.

But the military appeared determined to uproot Fatah al-Islam after
three days of heavy bombardment of the camp, sparked by an attack by
the militants on Lebanese troops Sunday following a raid on its
fighters in the nearby northern Lebanon city of Tripoli.

“Preparations are seriously under way to end the matter,” Defense
Minister Elias Murr said in an interview Wednesday with Al-Arabiya
television. “The army will not negotiate with a group of terrorists and
criminals. Their fate is arrest, and if they resist the army, death.”

Members of Fatah al-Islam said they were ready to fight.

“We are not going to let those pigs defeat us,” said one of a
half-dozen fighters standing outside the group’s office inside the camp
Wednesday. The fighter, who identified himself with the pseudonym Abu
Jaafar, wore a belt hung with grenades.

Another militant who said he was a deputy leader of the group stated
the fighters were willing to agree to a cease-fire if the military
allowed them to remain in the camp.

It is unclear how many Fatah al-Islam fighters are in the camp, but some of the group’s leaders say they number more than 500.

Around half of Nahr el-Bared’s 31,000 residents have fled, traveling
on foot and in cars past burned-out shops on streets strewn with broken
glass, garbage and dead rats. But thousands remain behind, either too
ill to travel or unwilling to abandon their homes, and are now in
danger of being caught in the crossfire.

Though there was no fighting Wednesday, the army brought seven more
armored carriers to its positions ringing the camp in the afternoon.
Army officials refused to comment on the reinforcements.

Murr said 30 Lebanese soldiers were killed in the three days of
fighting, along with as many as 60 militants, including fighters from
Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia. But a top Fatah al-Islam
leader said only 10 of his men were killed. U.N. relief officials said
the bodies of at least 20 civilians were retrieved from inside the camp.

At U.N. headquarters in New York, the Security Council condemned the
attacks by Fatah al-Islam “in the strongest possible terms,” saying
they constitute an attempt to undermine the country’s stability,
security and sovereignty.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also signaled her support
for the Lebanese government, saying “we are quite certain that with the
resolve that they’re showing, they’re going to be able to handle the
situation.”

Lebanon has 12 Palestinian refugee camps, all plagued by poverty and
overcrowding. The Lebanese military stays out of the camps under a 1969
agreement that allows the Palestinians to run them.

Picture: Lebanese army commandos secure the southern entrance of the
besieged camp of Nahr al-Bared in north Lebanon. Lebanon’s defense
minister issued an ultimatum to the Islamic militants holed up in a
Palestinian refugee camp on Wednesday after three days of fierce
fighting with the army that they must surrender or else.

Sources: AP, Ya Libnan