Two killed in clashes in Palestinian camp in Lebanon (Roundup)

Feb 15, 2010, 17:50 GMT

Beirut - A member of the mainstream Fatah movement and a civilian woman were killed when clashes erupted Monday inside the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el Hilweh in southern Lebanon, Palestinian sources said.

The clashes involved members from Fatah movement, who are loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and others from a Sunni fundamentalist group called Jund al-Sham (Soldiers of Greater Syria), which has links with al Qaeda.

Sobhi Abu Arab, a Fatah military official in south Lebanon, said the clashes in Ain el-Hilweh were caused by an attack by Jund al-Sham member Abed Foddah against Fatah member Mohammad Tamim.

Abu Arab called for Foddah to be handed over to the Lebanese army.

The tensions the spread to the outskirts of the southern port city Sidon, where the camp is located.

Snipers from Jund al Sham took the roofs of some houses inside the camp and started firing at people on roads leading to Sidon, a Palestinian source inside teh camp

There are some 367,000 Palestinian refugees living in 12 camps across Lebanon. Security inside the camps is in the hands of Palestinian groups while the entrances of the camps are monitored by the Lebanese army.

Ain el Hilweh camp is the largest camp in Lebanon, housing some 70,000 people.

On January 2, a Fatah member was killed in similar clashes.

Jund al-Sham is a terrorist group believed to have first appeared in Afghanistan in 1999. The group was established by Syrians and Palestinians with links to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who went on to found al-Qaeda in Iraq and was killed by a US airstrike in 2006.