WASHINGTON/BEIRUT, 14 August 2007 — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has designated Fatah Al-Islam, a Lebanese Islamist organization blamed for major fighting at a refugee camp in that country, as a “terrorist” group, the State Department said yesterday.
“As part of ongoing US efforts against terrorism,” Rice “designated Fatah Al-Islam as a specially designated global terrorist” group under US law, the department said in a statement. Rice took the action, which cuts off the group from the US financial system, in consultation with the US attorney general and the treasury secretary, the statement said.
Fatah Al-Islam, an offshoot of the Syria-backed secular Palestinian terrorist group Fatah Al-Intifada, initiated recent hostilities in the Nahr Al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli, Lebanon, with an “unprovoked attack” on Lebanese security forces in May, according to the statement.
The group had used civilian refugees as “human shields” during the fighting, it said. More than 130 Lebanese soldiers and civilians have died in the conflict at Nahr Al-Bared. A Lebanese soldier was killed yesterday in the battle with the militia, the army said in Beirut. The latest fighting comes after the Lebanese Army on Sunday rejected a conditional offer of surrender by Fatah Al-Islam and demanded that the militants give themselves up to stand trial.
