Two Lebanese soldiers die in attack by militia linked to al-Qaida

ISLAMIST gunmen killed two Lebanese soldiers at a Palestinian refugee camp in south Lebanon yesterday, in the first fatal spillover of fighting between the army and al-Qaida-inspired fighters in the north.

Two militants of the Jund al-Sham group were also killed in the gun battle on the edge of the big Ain al-Hilweh camp near the southern port city of Sidon, security and military sources said.

Three soldiers and two civilians were hurt in intermittent clashes, which began on Sunday night and calmed yesterday.

Hundreds of civilians fled Ain al-Hilweh, a sprawling shantytown perched on a hillside above Sidon, 42km south of Beirut. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction dominates the camp, but small Islamist groups have a foothold there and in several other refugee camps in Lebanon.

The Lebanese army has battled one such Sunni group, Fatah al-Islam, for more than two weeks at the Nahr al-Bared outside Tripoli, 100km north of the Lebanese capital.

The Ain al-Hilweh clashes were the first to erupt in other Palestinian camps in Lebanon, where few people support Fatah al-Islam.

Palestinian factions held emergency talks with the army command in Sidon to ease tensions. Jund al-Sham fighters then ceded their positions to gunmen from other Islamist groups.

About 500 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians who had fled the fighting took refuge at the municipality compound in Sidon.

The violence at Nahr al-Bared is Lebanon’s worst internal fighting since the 1975-1990 civil war. At least 113 people have died and about 25,000 of the camp’s 40,000 refugees have fled.

A 1969 agreement prevents the army from entering Lebanon’s 12 Palestinian camps, home to 400,000 refugees.