Asia-Pacific

Dozens killed in Lebanese fighting

(AP)
Updated: 2007-05-21 20:47

Some camps have become havens for Islamic militants accused of carrying out attacks in the country and of sending recruits to fight US-led coalition forces in Iraq.

Palestinian officials in the West Bank rushed to distance themselves from the Fatah Islam group and urged Palestinian refugees in the camp to isolate the militant group, which first set up in the northern Lebanese camp last fall after its leader was released from a Syrian jail.

The group's leader, a Palestinian named Shaker al-Absi wanted in three countries, said in a March interview with The New York Times that he was trying to spread al-Qaida's ideology and was training fighters inside the camp for attacks on other countries.

He would not specify which countries but expressed anger toward the United States. And he was sentenced to death earlier in absentia along with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq killed last summer by US forces in Iraq, for the 2002 assassination of an American diplomat in Jordan.

Al-Absi had been in custody in Syria until last fall but was released and set up in the camp, where he apparently found some recruits, Lebanese officials said.

The Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. TV station reported Sunday that also among the dead militants also were men from Bangladesh, Yemen and other Arab countries, underlining the group's reach outside of Lebanon.

Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said Sunday the fighting was a "dangerous attempt at hitting Lebanese security."

Major Palestinian factions have dissociated themselves from the group. Lebanese Sunni political and religious leaders backed the army and the government.

Meanwhile, in Beirut late Sunday, an explosion across the street from a busy shopping mall killed a 63-year-old woman and injured 12 other people in the Christian sector of the Lebanese capital - further raising fears of unrest, police said.

Beirut and surrounding suburbs have seen a series of explosions in the last two years, many targeting Christian areas. Authorities blamed Fatah Islam for Feb. 13 bombings of commuter buses that killed three people, but the group denied involvement.

Syria has denied involvement in any of the bombings, but Lebanon's national police commander Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi said Sunday that Damascus was using the Fatah Islam group as a covert way to wreak havoc in the country.