BEIRUT, 3 June 2007 — Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora vowed yesterday to crush “terrorist” Islamists fighting the army in the north and said their only option was to surrender with their arms.
“This is a terrorist gang. They have to surrender with their arms,” Siniora said in a live interview with Al-Arabiya television.
“They have to surrender to the (Lebanese) state and justice ... and they will face a fair trial,” he said.
Siniora said Fatah Al-Islam had about 250 members and that “the army is currently conducting surgical operations in order to eradicate this phenomenon.”
“The political authorities are coordinating with the army command in order to eradicate this group,” he said.
Siniora said Nahr Al-Bared’s population dropped from more than 31,000 to less than 3,000, including the gunmen, after civilians fled following the outbreak of fighting on May 20.
He said Fatah Al-Islam has used firepower to prevent the remaining civilians from leaving the camp, in an apparent bid to use them as human shields.
Lebanese troops yesterday pounded suspected positions of the militants to dislodge them from their hide-outs but the group vowed it would not surrender.
“There is no way we will give up our weapons because it is our pride. We cannot even contemplate surrendering,” Abu Salim Taha, spokesman for Fatah Al-Islam, told Reuters by telephone from inside Nahr Al-Bared camp in north Lebanon. Amid the constant thud of explosions and crackle of machine-gun fire, especially on the southern part of the camp, smoldering fires and plumes of black and white smoke billowed from many of the camp’s bombed-out buildings.
Soldiers fired barrages of artillery shells and mortar bombs, leveling the camp’s two highest buildings and leaving others in smoking ruins. A French-made Gazelle army helicopter fired two rockets and machine-gun barrages at targets on the camp’s coastal side. “The situation in the camp is very miserable...The shelling was concentrated on all the roads in the camp. More than 60 percent of the camp has been destroyed,” Abu Darwish, a camp resident, told Reuters.
The army has been battling the Fatah Al-Islam militants in Lebanon’s worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war. The Lebanese government says Fatah Al-Islam triggered the fighting when it attacked army positions around the camp and Lebanon’s second largest city, Tripoli.
The army appealed to refugees remaining in the camp to “be patient and to expel those criminals from among you.” It also renewed its calls on militants to surrender, saying they would face a fair trial.
Security sources said two soldiers died in overnight fighting and one more died yesterday, bringing the total death toll in the two-week conflict to 106, of whom 41 are soldiers. At least 16 people were killed inside the camp on Friday, but it was unclear whether they were militants or civilians.
A delegation of Palestinians appealed for a truce to transport the wounded to hospitals and to bury the dead.
“Since yesterday morning, the shelling has been ongoing all over the camp. Two shells fell on the building I’m in now. Several buildings have collapsed,” said a Palestinian resident inside the camp. “There’s only one clinic with one doctor left. There’s no electricity, bread or medicine.” On Friday, elite troops seized three key Fatah Al-Islam positions and destroyed sniper nests on the camp’s northern and eastern edges. Many of the militants are foreign Arab fighters.
A military source said the army also destroyed several structures overlooking its positions on the camp’s edge.
While the army has not entered the camp’s official boundaries, it has encroached on the militants’ positions on Nahr Al-Bared’s outskirts, confining them to specific points.
Nahr Al-Bared was set up as a temporary tent camp to house Palestinian refugees fleeing their homes after the creation of Israel. Since then the camp’s official perimeters have widened to accommodate its ballooning population. A 1969 Arab agreement prevents the army from entering Lebanon’s 12 Palestinian camps, home to 400,000 refugees.
More than 28,000 of Nahr Al-Bared’s refugees fled the camp in the past two weeks due to increasingly desperate humanitarian conditions. Hundreds of people have been wounded.
Lebanon’s anti-Syrian Cabinet says Fatah Al-Islam is a Syrian tool, but Damascus denies any links to the group and says its leader, Shaker Abssi, is on Syria’s wanted list.
Abssi has said he follows Al-Qaeda’s ideology, but has no direct links to Osama Bin Laden’s network. Many of his estimated 300 gunmen have fought in Iraq, Palestinian sources say.
