34 killed as violence flares in Lebanon

Government soldiers Sunday battled members of an Islamic group at a refugee camp near the Syrian border and in a nearby coastal city, with at least 33 people killed in the worst bloodshed here in almost a year.

A bomb went off before midnight in an affluent Christian neighborhood of Beirut, killing one woman and injuring five other people, relief workers said. It was unclear whether the explosion was connected to the earlier fighting in the north.

The heavy, daylong combat stoked fears among many Lebanese that neighbor Syria was involved and trying to foment unrest at a crucial time.

Throughout the day, Lebanese soldiers shelled the Nahr Bared camp, home to thousands of Palestinian refugees as well as the militant Sunni group Fatah al-Islam, which has been linked to Al Qaeda. About 10 miles to the southwest in Tripoli, Fatah al-Islam fighters barricaded themselves in an upscale apartment block and fought soldiers with grenades and machine guns for 10 hours before being overrun.

The militants, who have been accused of having ties with Syria, also battled security forces elsewhere in Tripoli and attacked an army checkpoint outside the coastal city, killing several soldiers in one strike, officials and witnesses said.

In total, at least 23 soldiers and 10 militants were killed in the clashes, officials said. Four children and three women in the refugee camp were injured in the army’s shelling, medical officials said. Residents said more than a dozen people had been killed. It was impossible to immediately verify the numbers because the army had sealed off the camp.

“We’re ready to fight until the last drop of blood,” said a spokesman for Fatah al-Islam inside the camp. “Our aim is to please God and liberate Jerusalem.”

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora described the militants’ attacks as “a premeditated crime and a dangerous attempt to destabilize” the nation.

Lebanon has long been under the sway of Syria, which kept troops here for nearly three decades until popular protests and international pressure over the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri forced them to withdraw in 2005. A continuing standoff between pro- and anti-Syrian parties has brought political paralysis to the country.

In addition, Lebanese are haunted by the fear that sectarian division will bring about the return of civil war, which ravaged the country in the 1970s and ‘80s and led to the Syrian troop presence.

Many Lebanese expressed support for Sunday’s crackdown, charging that Syria was instigating violence in hopes of heading off a proposed tribunal to try suspects in the February 2005 assassination of Hariri. Syria is suspected of involvement in that killing, which helped trigger the protests that forced the withdrawal of Syrian troops. Damascus has long denied the allegation.

“Nobody will stop the international tribunal,” said Saad Hariri, son of the slain prime minister and head of the parliamentary majority, at a news conference in Beirut.

On Sunday, Syria closed two of its border crossings with Lebanon. The roads from Beirut were gridlocked as the Lebanese army set up checkpoints and thousands of troops in tanks traveled to northern Lebanon.

Anti-Syrian politicians say Fatah al-Islam receives Syrian backing in the form of weapons and money. Fatah al-Islam, an offshoot of the Syrian-backed Palestinian group Fatah al-Intifada, has said it is committed to fighting the enemies of Islam and denies having any Syrian support. Its leader, Shaker Abbsi, spent three years in a Syrian prison and is wanted by Jordanian authorities in the killing of a U.S. diplomat in 2002.

In a March interview at the camp, a spokesman for Fatah al-Islam told The Times that his group was formed by Palestinians from various Arab countries and denied charges that any of them had fought in Iraq.

Lebanese authorities say the group was behind a pair of bombings on two buses in February that killed three people in a Christian area in the mountains above Beirut.

Inside the Nahr Bared camp, home to about 40,000 Palestinian refugees, residents say the group has been expanding recently, putting a chokehold on the camp’s economy. Its growing influence has led to clashes within the camp as some refugees have fought the militants.

But Sunday, the army’s heavy shelling did not discriminate among the camp’s residents.

Ashraf Ibrahim, 30, a soccer coach, said more than a dozen people had been killed in the shelling.

“I can barely describe what has happened,” he said. “We could not move. And we did not know exactly what was going on.”

He said as many as 50 people had been injured. “We still feel scared,” Ibrahim said.

The fighting in Tripoli began at 3:30 a.m., when soldiers came to raid the apartment in search of suspects in a bank robbery Saturday, officials said. They were met with fierce resistance by the heavily armed militants, whom Information Minister Ghazi Aridi described as “key leaders” of Fatah al-Islam. He said they had been planning attacks inside Lebanon.

Frightened neighbors cowered in their homes as commandos fired grenades at the fighters. For most of the day, the sound of gunfire and explosions echoed between the apartment blocks, which are pockmarked by bullet holes from the civil war.

The violence brought back unpleasant memories for the war-weary Lebanese who suffered through a summer of bombings by Israel last year after the Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah seized two Israeli soldiers.

“At first I thought it was Israel shelling Tripoli,” said Mohammed Badawi, a Moroccan businessman who lives near the building where the militants were holed up.

A cook at the Bakery Green Lebanon continued making pizzas as soldiers with tanks and heavy weaponry shelled the camp from a nearby hill.

“The whole area is supporting the army and the government,” he said. “The army is our people.”

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Special correspondent Raed Rafei in Nahr Bared and Times staff writer Borzou Daragahi in Beirut contributed to this report.