Al Qaeda-inspired militants and Lebanese troops fought intermittently at a Palestinian refugee camp on Thursday as the army tried to force the gunmen out of their hide-outs. Heavy fighting continued overnight with soldiers using helicopters, artillery and machinegun fire to attack Fatah al-Islam's positions in the coastal Nahr al-Bared camp. Security sources said three soldiers were wounded by a militant RPG in the overnight fighting. One soldier was also killed by sniper fire, according to the most recent reports from the camp.At least 114 people, including 47 soldiers, have been killed since the fighting erupted on May 20, making it Lebanon's deadliest internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war. The army and the government say Fatah al-Islam started the conflict and insist its men give themselves up, a demand the militants have rejected. "The army is continuing to put pressure on the militants. They are surrounded and there is no option for them but to surrender," a military source said.
The authorities charged five more members of Fatah al-Islam with terrorism on Wednesday, bringing to 27 the total indicted, judicial sources said. The charges carry the death penalty.
The violence is the latest jolt to stability in Lebanon, already in the midst of a 6-month-old political crisis. Four bombs have exploded in the Beirut area, killing one person and wounding dozens, since the Nahr al-Bared fighting began.
In Ein al-Helweh, Lebanon's largest refugee camp, some residents said they feared more violence after clashes earlier this week between the army and the militant Jund al-Sham group. A 40-member force made up of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah group and three Islamist factions has deployed at the camp's northern entrance, where two soldiers and two militants were killed in firefights that erupted on Sunday. "I am not comfortable with the force deployment because it cannot repel Jund al-Sham. If it was able to, it would have exterminated them in the first place," said Nabil al-Jammal, a vegetable seller in the squalid camp in south Lebanon. "The schools are empty because people are still worried something might happen."
Palestinian factions, including Fatah and the Islamist Hamas group, oppose Fatah al-Islam, which shares al Qaeda's ideology of global jihad and recruits fighters from other Arab countries. They are also hostile to Jund al-Sham, a small group which is based in Ein al-Helweh and has links to Fatah al-Islam.
About 27,000 of Nahr al-Bared's 40,000 residents have fled, many to the nearby Beddawi camp. UNRWA, the agency that cares for Palestinian refugees, has appealed for $12.7 million to meet their urgent needs. A