Thousands Of Refugees Flee Lebanon Camp
Thousands of people fled a crowded refugee camp Tuesday night during a lull in three straight days of clashes between Lebanese troops and Islamic militants holed up inside, Associated Press reporters at the scene said.
AP Television News video from the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp showed women clutching children and piling up in pickup trucks, some waving white flags, as they tried to leave the partially destroyed camp.
Others fled on foot, and ambulances could be seen evacuating the wounded.
U.N. relief officials in another camp located a few miles to the south of Tripoli said they expected 10,000 Palestinian refugees from Nahr el-Bared to arrive through the night.
Refugees from Nahr el-Bared were seen raising white towels from windows and even waving white plastic bags. Boys carried babies, and a young boy and a woman helped an elderly woman, hurriedly walking on the side of the road as cars sped past carrying more refugees.
Many of the packed cars driving out had their windows blasted from the fighting.
Earlier, a U.N. convoy carrying relief supplies was hit during the fighting between the Lebanese troops and the Fatah Islam fighters.
The Lebanese army initially stopped the convoy of six trucks from the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which aids Palestinians, from entering the camp. The convoy was later allowed in during a brief cease-fire.
But two pickup trucks and a water tanker got caught between the lines of the two sides and were hit as they entered the camp, said an UNRWA official, speaking to The Associated Press by telephone from the entrance of the camp.
The official said the convoy was then shot at as it tried to deliver aid. A car from inside the camp was also hit by fire in the area at the same time, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
Al-Arabiya satellite television reported four civilians were killed in the incident. The UNRWA official said there were 15 civilian casualties but did not give a breakdown of dead and wounded. There was no official confirmation of either report.
The UNRWA official said earlier that he had reports dozens of buildings in the camp had been destroyed with residents trapped in the rubble.
At least 29 soldiers and 20 militants have been killed in the fighting since Sunday. The number of civilian casualties is not known, however, because relief workers, Lebanese authorities and journalists have had limited or no access to the camp.
Overnight, the Lebanese government ordered the army to finish off the militants who have set up in Nahr el-Bared, where 31,000 Palestinian refugees live on the outskirts of the northern port of Tripoli.
Black smoke billowed from the area Tuesday amid artillery and machine gun exchanges between troops and militants. Lebanese troops skirmished with Fatah Islam fighters, trying to seize militant positions on the outskirts of the camp.
"There are dead and wounded on the road, inside the camp," screamed a Lebanese woman, Amina Alameddine, who ran weeping from her home on the edge of the camp. She fled with her daughter and four other relatives after Fatah Islam fighters started shooting at the army from the roof of her house.
At the same time, Lebanese troops sought to flush out fighters hiding in Tripoli. Soldiers raided a building where Fatah Islam militants were believed to be hiding out, blasting an apartment with grenades, gunfire and tear gas.
They found no one in the apartment. As they pursued a militant hours later, he blew himself up by detonating an explosives belt rather than surrendering. None of the troops was injured.
Dozens of refugees angered by the assault on Nahr el-Bared burned tires in protest in the southern camp of Ein el-Hilweh, Lebanon's largest Palestinian camp. Protesters also burned tires in Rashidiyeh camp, farther south.
The Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. and camp residents reported that 200 Palestinians in Nahr el-Bared demonstrated against Fatah Islam, asking them to leave the camp.
Reports emerged from the camp of heavy destruction from the three days of bombardment by Lebanese artillery and tanks and militants who returned fire with mortars and automatic weapons.
"The shelling is heavy, not only on our positions, but also on children and women. Destruction is all over," Fatah Islam spokesman Abu Salim Taha told The Associated Press by telephone from inside the camp.
Lebanese authorities do not enter the camps under a nearly 40-year-old agreement with the Palestinians.
The tens of thousands of Palestinians live in two- or three-story white buildings on the camp's densely packed narrow streets. Refugees have been hiding in their homes inside the camp and Palestinian officials there said nine civilians were killed Monday.
After a morning of battles, the camp briefly fell silent Tuesday afternoon. Taha said the militants called a unilateral cease-fire, but it collapsed within an hour and heavy exchanges of fire and several explosions were heard. It was not known which side started firing.
The government of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora appeared determined to pursue Fatah Islam. Lebanon's Cabinet late Monday authorized the army to step up its campaign and "end the terrorist phenomenon that is alien to the values and nature of the Palestinian people," Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said.
The Bush administration reaffirmed its support for Saniora's government Tuesday and indicated it suspected Syrian involvement.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said the Fatah Islam militants want to disrupt the nation's security and distract international attention from a U.N. effort to establish a special tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut.
The United States "will not tolerate attempts by Syria, terrorist groups or any others to delay or derail Lebanon's efforts to solidify its sovereignty or seek justice in the Hariri case," Snow said.
Lebanese security officials accuse Syria of backing Fatah Islam to disrupt Lebanon. The charges are denied by Syria, which controlled Lebanon until 2005 when its troops were forced to withdraw from the country following Hariri's assassination.
The fighting, Lebanon's worst internal violence since the 1975-90 civil war, has added yet another layer of instability to an uneasy balancing act among numerous sects and factions vying for power. Saniora's government already faces a domestic political crisis, with the opposition led by Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah demanding its removal.
Major Palestinian factions have distanced themselves from Fatah Islam, which arose here last year and touts itself as a Palestinian liberation movement. But many view it as a nascent branch of al Qaeda-style terrorism with ambitions of carrying out attacks around the region.
CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips reports that Fatah Islam had been largely involved in the Iraq insurgency until now, but its recent militancy within Lebanon has brought down the wrath of the shaky government.
The group's leader, Palestinian Shaker al-Absi, has been linked to the former head of al Qaeda in Iraq and is accused in the 2002 assassination of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan. He moved into Nahr el-Bared last fall after being expelled from Syria, where he was in custody.
Since then, he is believed to have recruited about 100 fighters, including militants from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and other Arab countries, and he has said he follows the ideology of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Among the militants killed Sunday was a man suspected in a plot to bomb trains in Germany last year, according to Lebanese security officials.
The Arab League condemned the "criminal and terrorist acts" committed by Fatah Islam and gave its "total support for the efforts exerted by the Lebanese government and army to assert security and stability."
The Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah — Lebanon's strongest militant group and the main opposition to the government — has so far been backing the army in its confrontation with the Sunni radicals.
The Hezbollah stance highlights the complex tensions among Lebanon's various factions and militant groups. Hezbollah, as a Shiite Muslim group, is a sworn ideological and religious enemy of groups like the Sunni Muslim Fatah Islam.
Late Monday, an explosion went off in a shopping area in a Sunni Muslim sector of Beirut, wrecking parked cars and injuring seven people — a day after a bomb in a Christian part of the capital killed a woman. The two bombings while the fighting was going on in Tripoli were highly unusual. Taha, the Fatah Islam spokesman, denied his group was behind them.