By PHILIP ISSA

BEIRUT (AP) — Clashes
erupted in a densely-packed Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon
on Tuesday, wounding at least four people, including a three-year-old
boy with a bullet-wound to the head, Palestinian security officials
said. The Palestinian officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters. One person was later reported dead, Lebanon’s official news agency said. Witnesses could see smoke rising above the
Ein el-Hilweh camp and hear gunfire echoing behind its walls from the
nearby port city of Sidon.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees condemned the violence and said “armed actors” had entered one of its schools. Schools outside the camp’s walls also closed,
and staff and students were sent home. The Lebanese army, which
according to a longstanding agreement is not allowed inside the
Palestinian camp, closed a major highway nearby. Ein el-Hilweh was one of several camps set up
across the region for Palestinians displaced by the Arab-Israeli war in
1948. The Lebanon camps eventually grew into crowded, built-up
neighborhoods with endemic poverty.

Ein el-Hilweh is notorious for its
lawlessness and disrepair, with the Palestine Liberation Organization
and Islamic militant rivals controlling different parts of the camp. The
U.N. says more than 50,000 Palestinian refugees live inside the camp’s
confines of less than 1 square mile (2.5 sq. kilometers). The Lebanese army says Islamists in Ein el-Hilweh are harboring fugitives from around the country.

Residents poured out of the camp Tuesday, saying they were fed up with the infighting. “The best thing that could happen would be to
allow everyone to leave and let (the gunmen) fight each other until the
end,” said Mahmoud Atayah, a 33-year-old civil activist from the camp He said camp leaders were “conspiring against
the Palestinian people,” and said the Islamists and the Fatah faction
of the PLO were fighting over the budget and the right to represent the
Palestinians.

Neighborhoods on the eastern side of the
camp, where Fatah fighters have traditionally maintained order, were
under lockdown because of the fighting. The PLO ambassador to Lebanon held meetings
on Monday and Tuesday with representatives of Fatah and the Islamist
factions to try to restore a cease-fire. Local media quoted Fatah
official Azzam al-Ahmad as saying an agreement was reached to revive a
joint security force that was disbanded earlier this month. The joint security force, formed in 2014, was
disbanded ahead of PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas’ visit to Lebanon last
week. Fighting broke out during Abbas’ trip. The president did not visit
the camp.