Current News |
Dozens Slain as Lebanese Army Fights
Islamists
By HASSAN M. FATTAH and NADA BAKRI
Published: May 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/world/middleeast/21lebanon.html?_r=2&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
TRIPOLI, Lebanon, May 20 — Fierce clashes erupted
between Lebanese Army soldiers and Islamic militants
in the vicinity of a Palestinian refugee camp here
on Sunday, leaving 22 Lebanese soldiers and 17
militants dead and dozens injured in one of the most
significant challenges to the army since the end of
Lebanon’s bloody civil war.
The confrontation with the Islamist group, Fatah
al-Islam, raised fears of a wider battle to rout
militants in the rest of Lebanon’s 12 refugee camps,
where radical Islam has been gaining in recent
years. That, in turn, raised the possibility of a
deadly conclusion to the crisis, placing strains on
the embattled government of Prime Minister Fouad
Siniora.
While anxious not to seem weak in the face of the
militant challenge, military experts say, the
government and the military also want to avoid any
scenes that might draw comparisons to the Israeli
attacks on Palestinian camps in the West Bank and
Gaza.
Many of the complex crosscurrents of Lebanon’s
politics were on display in the crisis. The army,
under an agreement with the Palestinian leadership
and Arab countries, was not allowed to enter the
camp. Lebanese citizens, who hold the Palestinians
responsible for sparking the civil war in 1975,
cheered the army on the streets of Tripoli and
outside the camp.
Syria, which Lebanon accuses of backing Fatah
al-Islam, closed several border crossings in the
area. And the fighting broke out just as the
Security Council had taken up a resolution to try
suspects tied to the February 2005 assassination of
the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri.
Syria has been accused in previous investigations of
ordering the killing, but vigorously denies any
connection.
Tensions rose further late Sunday night when a car
bomb exploded in a nearly empty parking lot in a
Christian section of eastern Beirut, killing one
person, wounding 12 others and sparking fears of an
orchestrated terrorist campaign. Last month,
Lebanese authorities charged four members of Fatah
al-Islam with bombing two commuter buses carrying
Lebanese Christians in another Christian district.
Fatah al-Islam has been a growing concern for
security authorities in Lebanon and much of the
region. Intelligence officials say it counts between
150 and 200 fighters in its ranks and subscribes to
the fundamentalist precepts of Al Qaeda.
The group’s leader, Shakir al-Abssi, is a fugitive
Palestinian and former associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
the former leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia who was
killed last year in Iraq. Both men were sentenced to
death in absentia for the 2002 murder of an American
diplomat, Lawrence Foley, in Jordan.
In the six months since he arrived from Syria, Mr.
Abssi has established a base of operations at the
Nahr al Bared Palestinian refugee camp on the
northern outskirts of this city, and the scene of
the fighting on Sunday.
What began as a raid on several homes in Tripoli in
pursuit of suspected bank robbers connected to Fatah
al-Islam quickly escalated into an open
confrontation with the group at their stronghold in
the camp.
Three soldiers and four militants were killed in the
early morning confrontation, said a Lebanese
security official, who was not authorized to speak
publicly. Hours later, they said, militants tied to
the group attacked an army patrol in the Koura
region south of Tripoli, killing four more soldiers.
The gunmen also attacked soldiers who were passing
by unaware of the fighting, said Lebanon’s
information minister, Ghazi Aridi.
The fighting raged throughout the afternoon at the
camp, home to about 40,000 refugees, as army
reinforcements rushed to the scene and tanks began
shelling targets in the camp. Militants who had
taken positions around the outskirts of the camp
fired back, keeping the army at bay.
Four children and three women were injured in the
shelling, said one medical official, who requested
anonymity because his organization forbids members
from speaking to the news media. But residents
inside the camp, reached by telephone, said at least
two civilians had been killed and more than 45 had
been injured in the shelling.
There was no independent verification of the
residents’ claims.
By nightfall, the army had regained control of
several outposts surrounding the camp, but the siege
of the camp continued. Soldiers manned checkpoints
in the area and filled the streets late Sunday night
and armored personnel carriers rumbled through the
city.
Many residents of Tripoli welcomed the army into
town, and onlookers clapped whenever tanks fired
shells into the camp, bringing to the surface
longstanding tensions between Lebanese and
Palestinians.
“This should have happened from the start,” said one
man, who stood in a crowd of onlookers as the tanks
fired into the camp. The crowd shouted, “God is
great, and God protect the army,” with each shell
fired.
“We wish the government would destroy the whole camp
and the rest of the camps,” said another in the
crowd, Ahmad al-Marooq. “Nothing good comes out of
the Palestinians.”
But military experts said a direct assault on the
camps would be a grave mistake. “We cannot afford to
have that here,” said Elias Hanna, a retired army
general, who warned against a direct assault. “This
is not a question of the army’s capabilities or its
professionalism. You simply can’t send the army into
the camps to arrest 200 people without paying a
heavy price in civilian casualties.”
Residents of the camp said that water and
electricity had been cut off, and that an effort to
convince the militants to hold their fire to allow
the Red Cross to evacuate injured civilians
collapsed because the Lebanese Army said it could
not guarantee the medics’ security.
Lebanon’s 400,000 Palestinians remain among the most
downtrodden refugees in the Arab world, enjoying few
rights and facing strict restrictions on the kind of
work they can do. Most are limited to menial,
low-paying jobs and face significant prejudices.
Some refugee camps, in turn, have become fertile
ground for growing militancy, especially focused
against Israel.
In recent years the ranks of religious militants
bent on a broader jihad have swelled, as some have
traveled to Iraq to join the insurgency there and,
more recently, have returned to establish movements
of their own within the camps.
“The army will not be able to defeat them,” said
Ahmad Skaff, 20, who lives near the camp, and who
said he watched the militants gather outside the
camp early Sunday, carrying rocket propelled
grenades and other heavy weaponry, ready for a
fight. “They are fearless; they will slaughter the
army.”
The bomb in Beirut exploded just before midnight on
Sunday in a parking lot behind a towering shopping
mall called ABC and next to a multilevel garage.
There was no clear target, though it may have been
aimed at moviegoers who sometimes leave the mall
around midnight. But the lot was relatively empty at
the time of the bombing.
The explosion shattered the windows of apartment
buildings and stores for blocks around. Fire trucks
and police vehicles inched their way through the
crowded, narrow streets toward the site. Lebanese
soldiers in berets and green camouflage fatigues
pushed back hundreds of people trying to shove their
way into the area, many snapping photos with their
cell phones.
“We thought the building had collapsed because it
was so strong,” said Hamid Saliba, 39, as he and his
wife gingerly stepped through the debris of her
mother’s apartment, just a few hundred feet from the
blast site. A painting of Jesus Christ hung askew on
a wall. |
|
|