NAHR Al-BARED, Lebanon, 10 June 2007 — Five Lebanese soldiers were killed yesterday in new clashes with militants holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp, as mediators announced a setback in efforts to broker a peaceful end to the 21-day siege.
“Five of our soldiers were killed and a dozen wounded by Fatah Al-Islam snipers,” an army spokesman said.
A sixth soldier, wounded in fighting on Thursday, also died. That brought the death toll from three weeks of fighting between militants and the army to 115, of which 55 were soldiers.
The unrest, which has also seen at least eight bomb or grenade attacks in and around the capital, is by far Lebanon’s deadliest internal strife since the 1975-90 civil war. The resulting insecurity has prompted many schools to start their summer holidays early and has further dented an economy still reeling from last year’s devastating war with Israel.
A military commander outside the besieged Nahr Al-Bared refugee camp said four of the wounded soldiers were in a critical condition.
He said troops had met fierce resistance when they attempted to capture militant positions on the northeastern outskirts of the camp. “Our soldiers are fighting from high-rise to high-rise but are encountering fierce resistance from the extremists who have booby-trapped the buildings,” the officer said. “The army is advancing slowly but surely,” he added. An AFP correspondent heard heavy shelling of the tower blocks where the fighters of fringe militant group Fatah Al-Islam are dug in.
Fatah Al-Islam spokesman Shahine Shahine said the bombardment had been cover for a ground assault on militant positions on the camp’s outskirts, but that the attack had been repulsed.
The fighting came as a group of Muslim clerics that has been shuttling between the two sides in a bid to broker a peaceful end to the siege was due to meet army chief Michel Suleiman.
The mediators said they had suffered a setback on Friday when they were only able to see Shahine, not more senior Fatah Al-Islam leaders. “Something is going on within Fatah Al-Islam ranks,” delegation member Sheikh Fathi Yakan said.
“Their leaders are no longer visible. We were only able to meet a junior official while their top leaders like Shaker Abssi have gone to ground and aren’t talking.” Troops have so far refrained from penetrating the camp on the Mediterranean coast north of Lebanon’s second city of Tripoli, where some 4,000 civilians are still believed to be trapped by the fighting. By longstanding convention the army does not enter Lebanon’s 12 refugee camps, leaving security inside to Palestinian militants. However, in an interview broadcast on Friday, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora hinted that those arrangements might have to be reviewed in light of the failure of mainstream Palestinian groups to deal with the Islamist threat.
“Fatah Al-Islam’s entry into the Nahr Al-Bared camp shows the failure of the Palestinians’ autonomous security system,” Siniora told Paris-based news channel France 24.
The Western-backed premier, a staunch opponent of Syria, also implicated intelligence agents from Lebanon’s once dominant neighbor in sponsoring the militants. “Undoubtedly...there is a link between them and some of the Syrian intelligence services,” he said. The legislative program of Siniora’s government has been paralyzed by a nearly seven-month-old standoff with the pro-Syrian opposition.
Since six pro-Damascus ministers quit last November, the pro-Syrian speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri has refused to convene MPs to debate draft legislation proposed by the rump Cabinet.
Former colonial power France announced on Friday that it was willing to chair informal fence-mending talks between the two sides, a proposal that received a broad welcome across the political divide.
