Last update - 00:00 04/06/2007
Two Lebanese soldiers killed in S. Lebanon clash with militants
By Associated Press and Reuters
Lebanese security sources reported Monday that two Lebanese soldiers were killed in renewed fighting in a southern Lebanon Palestinian refugee camp, two weeks into continuing clashes between the Lebanese army and Islamic militants.
Five soldiers were wounded in the fighting, the sources reported.
The fighting renewed as militants from the group Jund al-Sham fired rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles at Lebanese troops stationed outside the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp.
The clashes in southern Lebanon came as Lebanese troops pressed ahead with an offensive against another militant group, the al-Qaida inspired Fatah al-Islam, in another refugee camp, Nahr el-Bared, located in the northern part of the country.
Earlier Monday, one Lebanese soldier was killed and two were wounded as troops exhanged fire with militants on the edge of the camp. Other sources inside the camp said a man from Usbat al-Ansar, another Islamist group, also died.
There was no official word on militant casualties from the fighting, which caused dozens of families to flee.
Fears had mounted that the violence in northern Lebanon, where the army was carrying out an intensified offensive to flush out Fatah al-Islam militants since Friday, would spread to other refugee camps.
Fighting erupted several times overnight, with a two-hour clash early Monday morning near the northern entrance of the Ain al-Hilweh camp, witnesses said.
The fighting appeared to be an attempt by militants to open a second front for the Lebanese army which is locked in a battle to the death with Fatah al-Islam in the Nahr al-Bared camp in northern Lebanon.
Jund al-Sham is a very small group that has sided with Fatah al-Islam, though there are no apparent organizational links between the two.
Fierce fighting has engulfed the outskirts of the Nahr el-Bared camp in northern Lebanon since Friday, when the Lebanese army using tanks and artillery launched an offensive to drive the Fatah al-Islam militants from their positions inside the settlement.
Near the southern city of Sidon, suspected members of the militant Islamic group Jund al-Sham on Sunday fired a rocket-propelled-grenade at a Lebanese army checkpoint outside a camp, wounding at least five people, security officials said on customary condition of anonymity.
Twelve Lebanese troops have been killed in the fighting at the northern Nahr el-Bared camp since Friday, raising the army's death toll to 47 since the standoff there began two weeks ago.
More than 100 people have been killed in the northern fighting.