Lebanese Forces Bombard Refugee Camp

Lebanese forces today renewed their bombardment of a Palestinian refugee camp where hundreds of Islamist militants have vowed to fight to the "last shot".

Shelling of the Nahr al-Bared camp just outside the northern port of Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest city, started at dawn, hours after prime minister Fouad Siniora's government stressed the need to put an end to Fatah al-Islam, an extremist Sunni Muslim group which emerged late last year.

Fatah al-Islam fighters attacked Lebanese troops on Sunday and Monday, killing 29 soldiers.

As Lebanese forces stepped up their efforts against Fatah al-Islam, bringing in reinforcements from other regions, medical sources inside the camp appealed for a stop to the fighting, saying there were dead and wounded lying on the streets.

"We can hear very intense shelling, it's constant," a witness said.

At least 20 militants, 32 soldiers and 27 civilians have been killed since fighting between the army and Fatah al-Islam fighters started on Sunday in Lebanon's worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.

Fatah al-Islam, a radical group thought to have links with jihadist factions in other Palestinian camps in Lebanon, has only a few hundred fighters, but they are well-armed and highly motivated.

"We are going to continue fighting until the last shot. There will not be another Jenin massacre," said Abu Salim, a spokesman for Fatah al-Islam, referring to an Israeli assault on a refugee camp in the West Bank in 2002.

Nahr al-Bared is home to more than 215,000 refugees, out of a total of 400,000 Palestinians in Lebanon.

The impoverished camp is the size of a small town, with more than 31,000 people living in two- or three-story white buildings on densely packed narrow streets alongside mosques, schools and businesses.

The army is seeking to uproot members of Fatah al-Islam without entering the camp itself, in keeping with its 1960s agreement with the Palestinians.

Major Palestinian factions have distanced themselves from Fatah al-Islam, which they see as an offshoot of al-Qaida with ambitions of carrying out attacks around the region.

While there is little sympathy for the militants in Nahr al-Bared, heavy civilian casualties could lead to a backlash against the fragile Lebanese government among Palestinians in other refugee camps, where Islamists have been growing in influence.

The fighting comes at a time when the western-backed Siniora government faces heavy domestic political pressure. The opposition led by Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah is demanding its removal.

Compounding the sense of crisis, an explosion in a shopping area in a Sunni Muslim sector of Beirut late last night injured five people and wrecked parked cars. That followed a bomb blast that killed a woman on Sunday in a Christian part of the capital.