A fragile truce held in a Palestinian camp in north Lebanon on Wednesday between the Lebanese army and Al-Qaida-inspired militants, witnesses said, after three days of clashes killed dozens of people.

Thousands of Palestinian refugees streamed out of the squalid camp overnight, escaping in case the truce between the army and the Fatah al-Islam group collapsed into more fighting.

At least 22 militants, 32 soldiers and 27 civilians have been killed in the fighting this week in Lebanon's worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war. The camp, home to 40,000, has come under heavy army shelling.

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A military source said there was calm but added that "the matter is not over."

"It will only end with the final end of this gang," he said.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner will travel to Lebanon this week to meet Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora and senior officials on Thursday and Friday, the ministry said in a statement.

"The aim of his visit is to reaffirm France's solidarity with Lebanon and with its population in this critical period, and to reaffirm the importance we attach to the independence, sovereignty and stability of this country," it said.

Fatah al-Islam, a Sunni Muslim militant group, had made Nahr al-Bared their base. Although the faction is led by a Palestinian, the Lebanese authorities say they have arrested Saudi, Algerian, Tunisian and Lebanese members of the group.

The government had pledged to root out Fatah al-Islam, which members of the governing coalition say is a tool of Syrian intelligence. Syria denies any link with the group.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday denounced "criminal attacks" against Lebanese troops fighting Islamist militants in a Palestinian refugee camp and urged immediate access for aid to civilians.

Arab governments promise Lebanon military aid
Arab governments promised military assistance for the Lebanese army on Tuesday at a special meeting called to discuss the army's conflict with militant Islamists at a Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon.

In a statement issued after a meeting in Cairo, ambassadors from Arab League member states said: "The Arab League council ... thanked Arab states which have provided military assistance and equipment to support the Lebanese army and security forces."

"It [the council] asserted the need to maintain this support by Arab states, especially in the latest security conditions through which Lebanon is passing," the statement added.

It was not clear if the statement meant Arab states had provided military support since the conflict began on Sunday.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa told a news conference later that he could give no details of any military assistance to the Lebanese government.

"But we will continue to see how to help Lebanon and it depends on the developments. We hope that a ceasefire ... would be very much in order and very much needed," he added.

Lebanon has also asked the United States for $280 million in military assistance to help put down the uprising, the U.S. State Department said Tuesday.

About $220 million would go to the Lebanese Armed Forces and another $60 million to security forces, spokesman Sean McCormack said. He added that the United States is weighing the request. He declined to specify the type of assistance requested.

Thousands of Palestinians flee camp
Thousands of Palestinians were fleeing the camp on Tuesday during a lull in the fighting, Associated Press reporters at the scene said.

AP reporters at the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp said the massive fleeing began at about 9 P.M. local time during a lull in the fighting.

United Nations relief officials in another camp located a few kilometers to the south of Tripoli said they expected 10,000 refugees from Nahr el-Bared to arrive during the night.

AP television footage from the Nahr el-Bared camp earlier in the afternoon showed dozens of women clutching children and boarding pickup trucks, leaving their partially destroyed homes. Others were fleeing on foot, and ambulances could be seen evacuating the wounded.

"There are a lot of dead and wounded in the houses, our homes are being destroyed on our heads," said a young refugee woman clad in a blue veil.

A man angrily interrupted her. "There's been a massacre, I witnessed it," said the man. He said he had seen 10 civilians killed in one room. "Six shells fell on us, the bodies were cut to pieces."

Lebanese media reported Tuesday that some 200 Palestinians in Nahr el-Bared demonstrated against Fatah Islam, asking them to leave the refugee camp.

UN convoy comes under fire amid renewed fighting
A convoy of United Nations relief supplies was hit in renewed fighting in northern Lebanon as it attempted to enter the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared on Tuesday, leaving at least 15 civilians dead or wounded, a relief official said.

The official from the UN Relief and Works Agency said a pickup truck and a water tanker were caught between the lines of the militant Fatah Islam fighters and the Lebanese army, which fired at the convoy.

"The army hit the place where the pickup truck and the tanker were. The army knew we were there and emptying our goods," the UN relief official told The Associated Press by telephone from the entrance of the camp.

The official said 15 civilians were killed or wounded but did not give a breakdown. The Al-Arabiya satellite television said four civilians were killed in the shooting.

"Maybe there was no coordination between the two sides ... maybe it was an accident," the official added.

But a senior army officer told AP the army had not opened fire at the convoy and said that if the incident did happen, it was to blame on Fatah al-Islam militants.

"We allowed the convoy to enter the camp. We did not open fire at it," he said on condition of anonymity.

Also Tuesday, a militant from the Islamist Fatah al-Islam group blew himself up with an explosive belt in a building in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Tuesday, a security source said.

The militant had been holed up in the same building in which Lebanese army troops had battled the Al-Qaida-inspired militants who were hiding there on Sunday.

"We were conducting a normal security operation and then it seemed obvious there was some unusual movement in the building," the security source said.

Security forces then tried to negotiate with the militant to give himself up. "Just as he came out of the apartment, he blew himself up," the security source said.

The building was empty and no security forces were wounded in the attack.

The renewed fighting came despite an offer by the militant group Fatah al-Islam to stop fighting the Lebanese army from 2.30 P.M. (1130 GMT) on Tuesday as long as the Lebanese army does not attack it.

"We are giving a chance for calm and a ceasefire from 2.30 p.m.," said Abu Salim Taha, a spokesman for the group. When asked how long it would last, he said, "It is open-ended if the army commits to it as well."

When asked if he was aware of the truce offering, a military source said, "initially, we do not start firing. We only return fire when we are fired upon. If there is no firing at us, we will not return fire."

Artillery and machine gun fire echoed around a crowded Palestinian refugee camp Tuesday as the Lebanese government ordered the army to finish off the Fatah Islam militants holed up inside the refugee camp in
the country's north.

The cabinet authorized late Monday the army to step up its campaign and end the terrorist phenomenon that is alien to the values and nature of the Palestinian people, Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said.

Hours after the decision, fighting flared up again Tuesday morning around the Nahr el-Bared camp, with black smoke billowing from the area after artillery and machine gun exchanges.

Abu Salim Taha said fighters of the group repulsed several attempts by Lebanese troops to advance on their positions inside the camp. "The shelling is heavy, not only on our positions, but also on children and women. Destruction is all over," he said Tuesday.

The army brought in reinforcements from other regions. Two trucks towing field artillery were seen heading toward Tripoli on the coastal highway late Monday.

Palestinian factions attempted to broker a cease-fire. The representative of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, Abu Ahmed Rifai, said Fatah al-Islam militants pledged to cease hostilities and withdraw from positions facing Lebanese troops.

A senior officer at Lebanese army command would not say a cease-fire was reached but repeated the military's stance that it will not shoot if it does not come under fire.

The fierce battle that began Sunday also has killed an unknown number of civilians, raising fears that Lebanon's worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war could spread in a country with an uneasy balancing act among various sects and factions.

Fighting paused briefly Monday afternoon to allow the evacuation of 18 wounded civilians, according to Saleh Badran, an official with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. But the fierce clashes quickly resumed.

Palestinian refugees hid in their homes as fighting raged, and Palestinian officials in the camp said nine civilians were killed Monday. Reports from the camp could not be confirmed because officials and reporters could not get inside.

"There are many wounded. We're under siege. There is a shortage of bread, medicine and electricity. There are children under the rubble of damaged buildings,"Sana Abu Faraj, a resident of the camp, told Al-Jazeera television by cell phone Monday.

The camp is more like a small town, with more than 31,000 people living in two- or three-story white buildings on densely packed narrow streets alongside mosques, schools and businesses.

It is one of more than 12 impoverished camps that are home to more than 215,000 refugees, out of a total of 400,000 Palestinians in Lebanon.

Major Palestinian factions have distanced themselves from Fatah Islam, which touts itself as a Palestinian liberation movement. But many view it as a nascent branch of Al-Qaida style terrorism with ambitions of carrying out attacks around the region.

Nevertheless, the military assault adds yet another layer of instability to Lebanon's potentially explosive politics. The government of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora already faces a domestic political crisis, with the opposition led by Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah demanding its removal.

A spokesman for Fatah al-Islam, Abu Salim, warned that if the army siege did not stop, the militants would step up attacks by rockets and artillery and would take the battle outside Tripoli.

"It is a life-or-death battle. Their aim is to wipe out Fatah Islam. We will respond and we know how to respond," he said from the camp.

The White House said it supports Siniora's efforts to deal with the fighting, and the State Department defended the Lebanese army, saying it was working in a legitimate manner against provocations by violent extremists operating in the camp.

The leader of Fatah al-Islam, Shaker al-Absi, has been linked to the former head of Al-Qaida in Iraq and is accused in the 2002 assassination of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan. He moved into Nahr el-Bared last fall after being expelled from Syria, where he was in custody.

Since then, he is believed to have recruited about 100 fighters, including militants from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and other Arab countries, and he has said he follows the ideology of Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Among the militants killed in the fighting Sunday was a man suspected in a plot to bomb trains in Germany last year, according to Lebanese security officials.

Lebanese security officials accuse Syria of backing Fatah al-Islam as a tool to disrupt the country.

Syria controlled Lebanon until 2005 when its troops were forced to withdraw from the country following the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem insisted Monday Damascus had nothing to do with Fatah al-Islam. "Fatah Islam is rejected and does not serve the Palestinian cause. On the contrary, it harms it in every way," he said.