Ten people have been killed in clashes between Lebanese troops and Fatah al-Islam in the port city of Tripoli, including six terrorists and a policeman's 4-year-old daughter, the army says. | The killed Islamist terrorists included three Saudis, a Russian from Chechnya and two Lebanese. |
The army confiscated "large quantities" of weapons , explosives and missiles from the apartment compound during the raid, the spokesman said. The army also found and confiscated tents, binoculars , wireless electronics for booby traps, computers and army uniforms. "The army has found the bodies of six Islamists inside an apartment building in Abu Samra," the spokesman said. "They were killed in clashes with our soldiers in which small arms and medium-sized weapons were used. We have not yet recovered the bodies because they may be booby-trapped."
The fighting began when the Islamist terrorists opened up with automatic weapons on an army jeep in the Abu Samra district of northern Lebanon's port city, killing one soldier. A military statement said 11 soldiers were also wounded, some seriously, in the clash with Fatah al-Islam, whose gunmen are locked in fierce combat with the Lebanese army in a nearby refugee camp. The military spokesman said the dead policeman had lived in the same Abu Samra apartment building which was raided. "He was killed in exchanges of fire with the Islamists who had taken his 4-year-old daughter hostage," he said. "The police sergeant, Khaled Khodor, his 4 year old daughter and his father-in-law Mohammed Abdul Rahman Theeb were all killed, and his wife and two of his sons were wounded."
Apartments burned
The photographer said four apartments were burnt out in the battle and the building's walls were burst open by tank and rocket fire. The army withdrew most of the soldiers from the area at midday, local time.
They were the first clashes in the mainly Sunni Muslim city between security forces and the militants since fighting broke out five weeks ago and a siege began at the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared. Twelve Fatah al-Islam members were killed by security forces in Tripoli between May 20 and 23.
The army spokesman said soldiers also arrested three Islamists after the overnight fighting in Tripoli but that a fourth who escaped was being hunted. Renewed shelling and small arms fire erupted on Sunday at Nahr al-Bared, 15 kilometres further north toward the Syrian border, a reporter said. Eighty soldiers have now been killed in the deadliest internal violence to afflict Lebanon since the 1975-1990 civil war - more than twice the number of troops killed during last summer's 34-day Israeli war against Shiite Hezbollah guerrillas. A total of 157 people, including at least 57 Islamists, have died in the violence. Three soldiers were killed on Saturday by a Fatah al-Islam booby-trap on the 35th day of the siege, the army said. A fourth was in critical condition.
In a statement, the military warned that "elements of the terrorist network... must not be permitted refuge among the civilians in the camp, allowing them to continue their aggression against our soldiers."
The army urged the population of Nahr al-Bared "to take a courageous stand so it does not fall victim to these criminals who have only one choice -- to surrender and be brought to justice." About 2,000 residents of the camp's pre-battle population of 31,000 are still inside Nahr al-Bared, with those who fled now dispersed among other Palestinian camps around the country, mostly at nearby Beddawi.