NAHR AL-BARED, Jun 9 (AFP): Lebanese troops again pounded Islamist militants holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp Saturday as mediators announced a setback to efforts to broker a peaceful end to the 21-day siege.
Heavy artillery opened up against the Nahr al-Bared camp from early morning targeting the high-rise buildings in its northern reaches where fighters of fringe militant group Fatah al-Islam are dug in.
Around 20 shells slammed into the camp, starting fires and sending plumes of black smoke into the sky over the Mediterranean coast, an AFP correspondent said.
The heavily outgunned militants responded with anti-tank and small arms fire against the encircling troops.
The new bombardment came as a group of Muslim clerics who have been shuttling between the two sides for a week to try to broker a peaceful outcome revealed that senior militant commanders have gone to ground.
On a mission into the camp Friday afternoon, they were only able to see Fatah al-Islam spokesman Shahine Shahine, delegation member Sheikh Fathi Yakan said.
"Something is going on within Fatah al-Islam ranks," the cleric said. "Their leaders are no longer visible. We were only able to meet a junior official while their top leaders like Shaker Abssi have gone to ground and aren't talking."
A total of 109 people have been killed since the fighting erupted on May 20, 48 of them soldiers, making it by far Lebanon's deadliest internal unrest since the 1975-1990 civil war.
There have also been at least eight bomb or grenade attacks in and around the capital, prompting many schools to start their summer holidays early and further denting an economy still reeling from last year's devastating war with Israel.
But troops have so far refrained from penetrating the camp on the Mediterranean coast north of Lebanon's second city of Tripoli, where some 4,000 civilians are still believed to be trapped by the fighting.
By longstanding convention the army does not enter Lebanon's 12 refugee camps leaving security inside to Palestinian militants.
However in an interview broadcast Friday, Lebanon's Western-backed Prime Minister Fuad Siniora hinted that those arrangements might have to be reviewed in the light of the failure of mainstream Palestinian groups to deal with the Islamist threat.
"Fatah al-Islam's entry into the Nahr al-Bared camp shows the failure of the Palestinians' autonomous security system," Siniora told Paris-based news channel France 24.
The premier, who is a staunch opponent of Syria, also implicated intelligence agents from Lebanon's once dominant neighbour in sponsoring the militants.
"Undoubtedly ... there is a link between them and some of the Syrian intelligence services," he said.
The legislative programme of Siniora's government has been paralysed by a nearly seven-month-old standoff with the pro-Syrian opposition.
Lebanon army pounds siege camp after mediation setback
FE Team | Published: June 10, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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