LEBANON: Fighting continues in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon

Record ID: 345299

  • Title: LEBANON: Fighting continues in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon
  • Date: 28th May 2007
  • Summary: CHILDREN PLAYING
  • Embargoed: 12th June 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Lebanon
  • Country: Lebanon
  • Reuters ID: LVAB3MJFD3BZ34MYJCJBWGFP3HGX
  • Story Text: Fresh fighting has erupted between the Lebanese army and militants in the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon. In Beirut, two police officers and two civilians were wounded when a hand grenade was hurled near a Lebanese police patrol. Heavy machinegun fire interrupted on Sunday (May 27) an otherwise working truce in northern Lebanon between Islamist militants and the Lebanese army in their weeklong stand-off at Nahr al-Bared refugee camp.
    Fresh fighting broke out on Sunday (May 27) night between the army and Fatah al-Islam militants but but a senior member of the governing coalition said there were no plans to end the standoff by military means.
    Druze leader Walid Jumblatt demanded the handing over of the Fatah al-Islam Islamist militants, who have been battling the army in Lebanon's worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.
    The army is not allowed into Lebanon's 12 Palestinian refugee camps under a 1969 Arab agreement. Lebanese troops have been unable to deal the militants a decisive blow from their positions around the camp.
    The main Palestinian factions have been in extensive talks to end the fighting. The Palestinian group Islamic Jihad said there was consensus that the standoff needed a political solution.
    But many believe Palestinian refugees, the 40,000 residents of Nahr al-Bared, are the ones paying the heavy price for the stand-off.
    Thousands of Palestinians have fled Nahr al-Bared. Most have gone to the nearby Beddawi camp, where there is serious overcrowding. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said Beddawi camp's population of 18,000 has more than doubled.
    "We are living in UNRWA schools in Beddawi camp under very difficult humanitarian conditions. In each classroom, there are 50 people. The simplest human circumstances are not available. Thank God we left with our children. We did not leave because we're cowards but because we're afraid for our children," said Mohamed Habous, who has been living in a classroom with his family in one of Beddawi's schools.
    Meanwhile, unknown assailants hurled a hand grenade near a Lebanese police patrol in Beirut on Sunday night, wounding two police officers and two civilians, a police spokesman said.
    The spokesman could not say whether the patrol was the target of the blast in the mainly Sunni Muslim Barbir district of the capital. Local media said the grenade was thrown by a man on a motorcycle.
    The Beirut area was rocked by three much larger blasts last week, killing one person and wounding 20.
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