Asia-Pacific

Dozens killed in Lebanese fighting

(AP)
Updated: 2007-05-21 20:47

One official in the camp said a total of 34 people had been killed inside the camp, including 14 civilians. But that could not be independently confirmed and other estimates of civilian deaths were lower.

An army officer at the frontline, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said troops directed concentrated fire at buildings known to house militants.

"Everything we know that they were present in has been targeted," he told The Associated Press.

Ahmed Methqal, a Muslim cleric in the camp, told al-Jazeera television by phone that sniper fire had confined the camp's 30,000 residents to their houses and that five civilians had been killed.

"They are targeting buildings, with people in them," he said. "What's the guilt of children, women and the elderly?"

Mohammed Hanafi, identified by al-Jazeera as a human rights activist in the camp, said a total of 34 people had been killed and 150 wounded.

It was unclear if Lebanese authorities had known El-Hajdib's whereabouts, or the whereabouts of the group's leader, before a gunbattle first broke out in Tripoli, a predominantly Sunni city known to have Islamic militants, witnesses said. After the first street fighting, the army began its siege of the nearby camp.

But Lebanon has struggled to defeat armed groups that control pockets of Lebanon - especially inside the country's 12 Palestinian refugee camps housing 350,000 people, which Lebanese authorities can't enter.