النائب الخازن اسف ل"بقاء لبنان مشرع الابواب للارهاب وللارهابيين"           رأى عضو كتلة التغيير والاصلاح النائب فريد الخازن، …

DAY 3 - MAY 22nd

By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI, Associated Press Writer, TRIPOLI, Lebanon -

AP reporters at the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp said the massive exodus began at about 9 p.m. during the lull in the fighting between the Lebanese army and the Fatah el Islam militant group of Sunni Muslims. U.N. relief officials in another camp located a few miles to the south of Tripoli said they expected 10,000 Palestinian refugees from Nahr el-Bared to arrive through the night. AP Television News video from Nahr el-Bared earlier in the afternoon showed women clutching children and piling up in pickup trucks, some waving white flags, as they tried to leave the partially destroyed camp. Others fled on foot, and ambulances could be seen evacuating the wounded.

Artillery and machine gun fire echoed around a crowded Palestinian refugee camp Tuesday for a third straight day as the Lebanese government ordered the army to finish off Islamic militants holed up inside. Angry Palestinians burned car tires in two other refugee camps in an ominous sign that the trouble could spread across Lebanon. The fighting between the Lebanese army and the al-Qaida inspired group Fatah Islam has raised fears of a backlash among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon's other refugee camps, where Islamic extremists have been growing in influence.

At the Nahr el-Bared camp on the outskirts of the northern port of Tripoli, black smoke billowed from the area after artillery and machine gun exchanges between troops and militants.A cease-fire declared in the afternoon collapsed whithin an hour, when the terrorist group striked at the civilians cars and the amry. As a result fighting resumed between Lebanese troops and militants holed up in the camp.It was the third failed attempt at a truce. A convoy of U.N. relief supplies was hit in a third day of fighting Tuesday between Lebanese troops and an Islamic militant group holed up in a crowded Palestinian refugee camp.

Inside the city of Tripoli, security forces moved in against a suspected Fatah Islam hide-out in an apartment building, witnesses said. After receiving a tip about armed men in an apartment, shots rang out at midmorning as security forces raided the building using tear gas. The apartment was gutted when the army threw in hand grenades, but apparently no one was caught.

DAY 2 – MAY 21 NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon (Reuters)  21 May- Lebanese tanks shelled Islamist militants in a Palestinian refugee camp on …

DAY 1 - May 20

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AP) 20 May -- Lebanese tanks pounded the headquarters of a group with suspected links to al Qaeda in a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli Sunday after the northern city's worst clashes in two decades killed 22 soldiers and 17 militants.The clashes between troops surrounding the Nahr el-Bared camp and Fatah Islam fighters began early in the morning shortly after police raided a militant-occupied apartment on a major thoroughfare in Tripoli and a gunbattle erupted, witnesses said. A senior security official said a high-ranking member of Fatah Islam, known as Abu Yazan, was among those killed. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Hundreds of Lebanese applauded as army tanks shelled the camp -- a sign of the long-standing tensions between some Lebanese and the tens of thousands of Palestinians who took refuge from fighting in Israel over the past decades.

"We strongly back the Lebanese army troops and what they are doing," said Abed Attar, a resident of Tripoli who stood watching the tanks fire into the camp while others cheered.

The violence adds one more destabilizing factor to conflict-ridden Lebanon, in the midst of its worst political crisis between the Western-backed government and pro-Syrian opposition since the end of the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war. It underlines the difficulties facing authorities in dealing with pockets of insecurity across the country that are havens for militants. The clash between army troops surrounding the Palestinian refugee camp and fighters from the Fatah Islam militant group began after a gunbattle raged in a neighborhood of nearby Tripoli, witnesses said.

The militant group is an offshoot of the pro-Syrian Fatah Uprising, which broke from the mainstream Palestinian Fatah movement in the early 1980s and has headquarters in Syria. As many other small factions in Lebanon, Fatah Islam's allegiance is sometimes questionable in this deeply polarized country.

Some Lebanese security officials consider that Fatah Islam is now a radical Sunni Muslim group with ties to al Qaeda, or at least al Qaeda-style militancy and doctrine. But some anti-Syrian government officials say they are a front for Syrian military intelligence aimed at destabilizing Lebanon. Syria has been fighting its own Sunni militancy, and has frequently battled with radicals striking in Damascus neighborhoods. Major Palestinian factions have dissociated themselves from Fatah Islam