Lebanese army clashes with Islamic militants

The fighting at a refugee camp near Tripoli leaves four soldiers dead. Military officials deny plans for an all-out assault on the camp, which is off-limits to its forces under an international treaty
By Borzou Daragahi
Times Staff Writer

12:24 PM PDT, July 12, 2007

CAIRO — Fierce clashes between government forces and Islamic militants left at least four Lebanese soldiers dead and nine injured today, Arab-language television and international news agencies reported.

The Lebanese army fired artillery and tank shells into the Nahr el Bared refugee camp near the north coastal city of Tripoli. A well-armed Islamic militant group called Fatah al Islam, which shares the ideology of Al Qaeda, has quartered itself in the camp that was home to 40,000 Palestinian refugees before the fighting started May 20.

Television footage showed thick plumes of black smoke rising from the camp, which has been the scene of occasionally fierce fighting since the conflict broke out.

Army officials who requested anonymity have tried to quash rumors in the media that the military was preparing for an all-out assault on the camp. Lebanese forces are officially forbidden to enter the site under the terms of a decades-old international treaty.

The intensified fighting coincides with the one-year anniversary of the monthlong war between Hezbollah and Israel. That conflict destabilized an already shaky Lebanon by squelching the country's economy and further polarizing the factionalized nation of 4 million, which is made up of sizable Christian, Shiite, Sunni and Druse communities jostling for power.

Lebanon is also home to about 400,000 Palestinians displaced by the 1948 establishment of Israel.

Fatah al Islam includes fighters from across the Arab world. Lebanon's U.S.-backed anti-Syrian political elite accuse Damascus of backing the militant group. Other analysts, including New Yorker investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, contend that radical Sunni militants were allowed into Lebanon to be used as a tool by the Sunni-led government against Hezbollah, a radical Shiite movement that is backed by Iran.

In a speech this week marking the start of last year's war, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora called for "putting a final end" to the festering conflict in Nahr el Bared, where an undetermined number of Palestinian refugees remain cowering in fear.

borzou.daragahi@latimes.com