- Title: LEBANON: Islamists fire Katyusha rockets in Lebanon camp battle
- Date: 13th July 2007
- Summary: (W3) NAHR AL-BARED, LEBANON (JULY 13, 2007) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF NAHR AL-BARED BEING SHELLED, SMOKE RISING, AUDIO OF BLASTS, GUNFIRE
- Embargoed: 28th July 2007 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Lebanon
- Country: Lebanon
- Reuters ID: LVA4B4MWRILW9ALF1BJX3DJW9WYG
- Story Text: Islamists have fired Katyusha rockets at a village as battles rage at a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon. Islamist militants fired Katyusha rockets at Lebanese villages on Friday (July 13) in a further escalation of their eight-week-old battle with the army at a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon.
Security sources said al Qaeda-inspired Fatah al-Islam fighters fired about a dozen of the 107mm rockets. They landed several miles away from the Nahr al-Bared camp in north Lebanon, causing some material damage but no casualties.
They said two Lebanese soldiers died in fresh battles at the camp on Friday. Another soldier wounded in ferocious fighting on Thursday (July 12) died of his wounds, bringing the military's death toll in the past two days to nine.
Fighting between the army and Islamist militants has killed 216 people since May 20, making it the country's worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.
The military, concerned about being sucked into a war of attrition, has stepped up pressure on the coastal camp to force the militants to surrender.
But the well-trained and well-armed militants, some of whom fought in Iraq or trained to go to fight there, have so far rejected all calls to surrender.
Witnesses said the army was bombarding the battered camp with artillery and tanks. Militants were responding with sniper and rocket fire. Black and grey smoke billowed from the camp's battered buildings, most of which have been reduced to rubble.
Thursday's fighting was the most ferocious since the Lebanese defence minister declared on June 21 that all major combat operations had ceased at Nahr al-Bared.
A 1969 Arab agreement banned Lebanese security forces from entering Palestinian camps. The agreement was annulled by the Lebanese parliament in the mid-1980s but the accord effectively stayed in place.
The violence has further undermined stability in Lebanon, where a paralysing 8-month political crisis has been compounded by bombings in and around Beirut. The country has yet to recover from last year's war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.
ends - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2011. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None