Al Qaida-inspired militants battling the Lebanese army for more than 10 weeks hit a main power station in north Lebanon with Katyusha rockets on Thursday, disrupting electricity supplies to wide areas.

Security sources said Fatah al-Islam militants, holed up in Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, fired half a dozen rockets at Deir Amar power station. At least two rockets hit the plant.

Kamal Hayek, the chairman of the state-owned electricity company, told Lebanon's official news agency that production at the 400 megawatt facility was halted while damage was assessed.

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In Beirut, military experts defused a Katyusha rocket wired to a timer and set to explode, security sources said. The device was found near the Palestinian refugee camp of Sabra.

At least 253 people, including 127 soldiers, have been killed in fighting between Fatah al-Islam and the army which erupted on May 20. It is Lebanon's worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.

The destruction of Nahr al-Bared, usually home to 40,000 refugees, has angered Palestinians across Lebanon, although very few of them support Fatah al-Islam.

Fatah al-Islam, which split from a Syrian-backed Palestinian faction last year, has Lebanese, Palestinians and other Arabs in its ranks, including some who have fought in Iraq. It says it supports al Qaeda's ideas, but has no direct links with it.

The conflict has further undermined stability in Lebanon, already crippled by a prolonged political crisis and shaken by bombings that have killed six U.N. peacekeepers and two anti-Syrian lawmakers in the past eight months.

The assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in 2005 marked an end to the relative stability Lebanon had experienced since it emerged from the civil war.