Two Lebanese soldiers and one armed militant were killed in seperate locations during heavy fighting in Lebanon on Sunday, officials said. Militants holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp fired rockets that landed in farm fields outside the camp, as the army bombarded suspected hideouts inside the besieged settlement.

Security officials said at least five Katyusha rockets landed in farm fields in the northern Akkar region, a few kilometers north of the Nahr el-Bared camp, where al-Qaida-inspired Fatah Islam militants have been fighting the Lebanese army.

In Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in south Lebanon, security sources said unknown gunmen shot dead Dharrar Rifai at . Rifai was a member of the now defunct Jund al-Sham group.

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Jund al-Sham was dissolved last month after clashes with the Lebanese army. Two groups dominate Ain al-Hilweh, Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp: Fatah and the al-Qaida-linked
Usbat al-Ansar.

In Nahr el-Bared, heavy fighting continued as the army pounded suspected militant hideouts with artillery shells and tank fire.The fighters responded with machinegun fire and rocket-propelled grenades, according to the officials.

The army was making progress toward Fatah Islam positions, the officials said. Witnesses also reported seeing a few Lebanese flags hoisted on the roofs of destroyed buildings inside the camp where the army appeared to be in control.

The state-run National News Agency said the army was encircling a group of Fatah Islam fighters hiding in one of their shelters inside the camp. It said the army had killed a number of fighters whose bodies were lying in the camp streets. The reports could not be immediately verified.

The use of Katyusha rockets appears to be a new tactic by the militants to ease the military pressure and expand the battles outside the camp. The militants fired at least six Katyusha rockets Saturday and 19 rockets on Friday that crashed into villages neighboring the camp, slightly injuring two
people and causing damage to property.

One Lebanese soldier was killed in Saturday's clashes and another died of fatal wounds he received Friday, raising to 96 the number of soldiers killed since fighting between the army and Fatah Islam militants erupted May 20 in the Nahr el-Bared, located on the outskirts of the northern port city of
Tripoli.

A senior Palestinian official told reporters in the nearby Beddawi refugee camp Saturday that not more than 70 Fatah Islam fighters remained in Nahr el-Bared. Sultan Abuleinein, head of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction in Lebanon, has called for the Islamic fighters to be eliminated
since the fighting began.

At least 60 militants and more than 20 civilians have been reported killed in the fighting, the country's worst internal violence since the 1975-90 civil war.