The Lebanese government offered late Monday a truce in its confrontation with Islamists in north Lebanon that cost 58 lives, as a bomb exploded in Beirut for the second straight night. "The Lebanese army is ready to stop firing if the other side does the same. It will not open fire if it is not attacked," a government source in Beirut said, on condition of anonymity. The offer followed indirect negotiations between the army and the splinter group Fatah al-Islam through the mediation of Jamaa Islamiya, a Sunni organisation, participants in the contacts told AFP.
The fighting had eased off by late Monday, but three soldiers were killed in an attack on an army post outside the Nahr al-Bared camp, raising the overall toll to 58 dead. Hospital and security sources gave a breakdown of the deaths: 30 soldiers, 17 Islamist fighters, 10 Palestinian civilians and a Lebanese civilian.
"The army is not only opening fire on us. It is shelling blindly. If this continues, we will carry the battle outside the (nearby port) city of Tripoli," spokesman Abu Salim Taha told AFP.After the threat to expand the confrontation from around their camp in north Lebanon, 10 people were wounded in the second unclaimed bomb blast to target Beirut in as many nights, hospital sources said. Police said the bomb in the upmarket residential district of Verdun in mainly Muslim west Beirut was placed under a car, setting ablaze several vehicles and damaging buildings. Verdun is home to Information Minister Ghazi al-Aridi, who at the time was giving a press briefing at the premier's office on an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss the deadly clashes around Nahr al-Bared.
Save The Children, which supports projects in the camp located near Syria's border and the port city of Tripoli, warned that the humanitarian situation for non-combatants was "deteriorating rapidly". Fears mounted of a humanitarian crisis in the camp, a coastal shantytown of narrow alleyways where rescue workers struggled to evacuate the dead and wounded and buildings were bombed out and power supplies cut.
The international community condemned the violence and voiced support for the Lebanese government's efforts to restore order after 46 people were killed on Sunday alone. "It would appear that the Lebanese security forces are working in a legitimate manner to provide a secure and stable environment for the Lebanese people, in the wake of provocations and attacks," the US State Department said. UN chief Ban Ki-moon regards the Fatah al-Islam actions as "an attack on Lebanon's stability and sovereignty," the secretary general's spokeswoman said.
But Syria predictably saw the turmoil as a bid to prod the UN Security Council into setting up the international tribunal to try suspects in the murder of Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri, for which Damascus has been widely blamed. | That's funny. I was just thinkin' this was designed to *distract* attention from the tribunal... |
Syria's UN Ambassador Bashar Jaafari also denied any ties between Damascus and Fatah al-Islam. Officials had voiced fears about the plight of refugees trapped in the camp, where the Red Cross was able to evacuate about 17 people during a brief lull in the fighting on Sunday. Doctors described seeing bodies strewn on the streets of Nahr al-Bared, which like all refugee camps in Lebanon remains outside the control of the government and in the hands of Palestinian factions. | Those're 'civilian' bodies. The fighters get drug under cover... |
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