By Alia Ibrahim
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, June 2, 2007
TRIPOLI, Lebanon, June 1 -- Lebanese tanks and armored personnel carriers, backed by an artillery barrage, closed in on a radical Islamic faction based in a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon, collapsing a tattered cease-fire after a 13-day siege.
Throughout the day Friday, columns of black and white smoke rose from the Nahr al-Bared camp, where as many as 25,000 of an estimated 40,000 residents have fled the fighting. Into the night, rounds fired by tanks and artillery pierced a cloudy sky.
The confrontation, which erupted May 20, has pitted Lebanon's ill-equipped military against Fatah al-Islam, a group that has drawn fighters from Lebanon and across the Arab world into its ranks in recent years. Its leader, Shaker al-Abssi, has said he adheres to al-Qaeda's ideology, and many of his fighters are believed to be veterans of the war in Iraq.
Military officials said forces seized three positions from Fatah al-Islam and destroyed sniper nests on the edges of the camp, which skirts the Mediterranean shore.
Before Friday's clashes, news agencies reported that 35 soldiers, 20 civilians and 29 to 60 fighters had been killed.
News agencies said at least two soldiers were killed Friday. They quoted security sources as saying at least 16 other people were killed inside the camp.
"Most of the positions of Fatah al-Islam both inside and outside the camp have been totally destroyed, and the army now controls all the positions that Fatah al-Islam had at the peripheries of the camp," said a Lebanese military spokesman.
He said the army had "tightened the ring" around the group in the fighting Friday.
Military officials barred reporters from approaching Nahr al-Bared, but witness accounts seemed to indicate that the army had limited its advance to the camp's outer neighborhoods, where Fatah al-Islam fighters had set up sniper positions.
Nahr al-Bared, like the 11 other Palestinian camps in Lebanon, has been off-limits to Lebanese authorities under a nearly 40-year-old agreement that allows Palestinians to run their own internal affairs.
Administered by the United Nations, Nahr al-Bared was established in 1949 to accommodate refugees who had fled territory that became northern Israel. It is now a densely built warren of concrete buildings and narrow alleys.
The fighting has created a humanitarian crisis for the camp's inhabitants, thousands of whom remain trapped inside. U.N. officials say only 5,000 of the 6,200 families registered in Nahr al-Bared have officially evacuated. Camp residents estimate that 10,000 people remain there.
"The bombing hasn't stopped all day long. Bombs are falling everywhere," Milad Salameh, a nurse who lives in the camp, said by telephone.
Salameh said that from his house in the Souk area, in the heart of Nahr al-Bared, he could hear people shouting for help in neighboring buildings, but he could do nothing, given the intensity of the shelling throughout the day Friday. "The building I am in has received seven shells since this morning," he said.
Health officials painted a bleak portrait of the camp, where the wounded were besieged within its confines, with no access for emergency personnel.
"There are no means to transport the wounded to the hospital. I have been at the hospital since this morning, and not one wounded person could be brought in, though we know very well that many have been wounded by the bombing," said Youssef al-Assaed, a doctor working at the hospital of Baddawi, a camp north of Nahr al-Bared where an estimated 25,000 Palestinian refugees have fled since the fighting began.
He said Nahr al-Bared residents were suffering from shortages of food and water.
At Baddawi, people expressed anger at the military's actions.
"This is a plot against the Lebanese and the Palestinians, a plot by the Americans who want to try their new weapons," shouted Mamoun Ahmad, a camp resident.
That anger has paralleled a surge in nationalism among some Lebanese. Radio and television stations have aired patriotic songs, and banners are scattered across the country in support of the military. The fighting with the relatively small group of Islamic militants represents some of the worst internal conflict since the 1975-90 civil war.
"If it weren't for our heroic army, we would have fallen under the custody of armed mobs," read one banner in nearby Tripoli, Lebanon's second-largest city.
Correspondent Anthony Shadid in Tripoli contributed to this report.
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