CINA

Lebanese troops move in for the kill

A new emboldened Beirut government is forcing an end to a 10-day stand-off as negotiations fail

Lebanese troops pushing ever farther into a besieged Palestinian refugee camp vowed to kill any members of the al-Qaeda-linked Fatah al-Islam group inside who did not surrender.
Lebanese officers on the scene said they would continue the assault until all of the militant jihadists were dead, and warned that any civilians who remained in the camp after last week's evacuation would be considered combatants.

The threats came as a Gazelle helicopter fired missiles yesterday and strafed buildings. 'There is no way we will give up our weapons because it is our pride. We cannot even contemplate surrendering,' Abu Salim Taha, a spokesman for the militants, said by telephone from the Nahr al-Bared camp. Those inside reported dire conditions. ' More than 60 per cent of the camp has been destroyed,' Abu Darwish, a resident, said.

The fighting followed the deployment of scores of armoured vehicles last Friday to break the two-week siege. As the fighting continued for a second day, smoke rose over the camp amid the constant thud of artillery explosions.
The violence - the worst internal fighting since the end of Lebanon's civil war 17 years ago - has driven up to 25,000 of the camp's 31,000 residents to flee. Thousands remain trapped. The final drive to clear the camp of militants was ordered by Lebanon's Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, who has been emboldened by a UN Security Council resolution to establish a tribunal to investigate the murder of the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Officially, the Lebanese government says that army units resumed shelling and attacks on Nahr al-Bared in response to near-daily sniper fire that killed two soldiers last week. Unofficially, military commanders said the Lebanese army would root out several hundred members of Fatah al-Islam.

Yesterday the army claimed it had overrun a series of militant positions used to snipe at soldiers, and had surrounded the Fatah al-Islam leadership. 'This is it. We tried to negotiate, but it didn't work,' said one special forces officer. 'The army will continue until they are all dead. There is no stopping.'

The final push to end the stand-off came after a near 10-day ceasefire to allow for the evacuation of civilians and for Palestinian authorities to negotiate a peaceful settlement. But with the Lebanese government demanding that the militants be turned over for trial negotiations quickly stalled.

Sultan Abu al-Aynayn, the PLO commander in Lebanon who had tried to negotiate an end to the fighting, had apparently given his tacit approval for the operation.

'While it is true that we might disagree on the means, a positive sign lies in the fact that various Palestinian and Lebanese groups agree that Fatah al-Islam should be readily crushed,' Aynayn said.

The Lebanese army commander at the scene said anyone who had not left during the ceasefire was unlikely to be considered a non-combatant.

'We risked our lives for 10 days to allow all the civilians to escape,' he said. 'If someone did not take the decision to leave, then they took the decision to stay, which means they are not a civilian.' Although there has been almost no independent access to the camp for almost two weeks, Red Cross workers estimate that thousands of innocents could be trapped inside with no electricity, food, water or medical care.

Some Lebanese government officials have accused Fatah al-Islam of using civilians as human shields and having fired on people who were attempting to escape the camp.

'The last civilians I took out of the camp were a family with a handicapped father five days ago,' said one civil defence worker. 'Fatah al-Islam would shoot at us every time we entered the camp. The Lebanese army would have to fight them just to get us close enough to take out the sick and the wounded. I could hear them screaming "Allahu Akbar" [God is great] as the soldiers killed them while we were taking out wounded civilians,' he said.

The decision to allow the army to storm the camp comes at the end of a week that saw the pro-western Siniora government make strides in the political struggle against the Hizbollah-led opposition that has paralysed the government for nearly a year. The opposition is demanding 11 cabinet seats, which would allow it to veto government policy.

But after the Security Council established a tribunal to investigate the 2005 murder of Hariri - a killing widely blamed on Syria and the key objection of the opposition - Siniora quickly moved first to welcome Hizbollah and its allies back into the government's ranks and, a day later, to crush the Fatah al-Islam uprising.

The sudden assertiveness of a Lebanese government that was widely thought to be teetering on the brink of failure took both the opposition and the militants by surprise.

Hizbollah found its position weakened after a series of uncharacteristic political mis-steps by its leader, Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, last week, which Siniora has been quick to exploit. Nasrallah last week warned against storming the camp, just as his Christian ally, Michel Aoun, called on all Lebanon to support decisive military action.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,,2094174,00.html

Nahr el-Bared, Fatah al-Islam militants

For more informations/latest news please read:

☞ Fighting Breaks Out at 2nd Lebanon Camp (AP)

☞ More clashes at second Lebanon camp (al-Jazeera)

☞ Lebanese accuse civilians of helping camp militants (Guardian, UK)

☞ A New Generation of Palestinian Militants in Lebanon (Der Spiegel, Germany)

☞ 'We have no rights and no future' (Guardian)

* Ain el-Hilweh is one of the largest camps for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. In the past - the 1970's/80's - it was several times attacked by Lebanese Christian Militias, the Israeli Air Force and the Syrian Army (of course every time with heavy losses in the civilian population!!)..