Fatah al-Islam 'Fighting Like Rats'

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Lebanon

Army tanks and artillery on Thursday resumed pounding Fatah al-Islam positions in Nahr al-Bared, concentrating their fire on the southern tip of the refugee camp where militants are making their last stand.
Even though the terrorists have fallen back from their original stronghold in Nahr al-Bared, those remaining are putting up a fierce fight.

"They're fighting like rats -- it's very hard to see them," a Lebanese army sergeant resting behind the lines told Agence France Presse on Thursday.

"Their firing points are camouflaged," he said. "When they open fire from one position we spot them and reply with everything we've got. But it's often too late -- the shooter has already gone."

Motivated, trained, well-armed and mobile, Fatah al-Islam militants are thought to contain veterans of the anti-American insurgency in Iraq among their ranks.

The army has been taken aback by the cruelty of their resistance.

"They made holes in the walls of the houses so they can pass from one to the other without coming out into the open," the sergeant said.

"We think they also have tunnels. They're operating in rapid reaction teams of two or three. That's why the fight is so hard."

Lebanese army heavy guns have concentrated their fire for weeks on the northern sector of Nahr al-Bared -- the "new" camp which is a spillover of the original Palestinian refugee camp whose boundaries were set in 1948 by the United Nations.

It was there that Fatah al-Islam chief Shaker Abssi, a Palestinian, had set up his command post. The northern part of the camp is now a blasted wasteland, devastated by tons of high explosive shell bursts.

The soldiers are advancing slowly as they secure the northern area, fearful of mines and booby traps that have already killed several of their number.

Demining teams precede them as large bulldozers, protected by sandbags and metal plates, wait in the rear, ready to go into action.

The surviving militants have now withdrawn into the "old" camp in the southern part of Nahr al-Bared, which is in principle controlled by more moderate factions like Fatah of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Fatah officials have said the order was given to prevent such a move, but clearly this has not been obeyed everywhere.

"It is impossible that they could hold out for more than a month without the help of at least some local fighters," said Mustafa Adib, director of the Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies in nearby Tripoli.

"Their cause is a popular one among some of the younger people in the camps, but also among radical jihadists who are well established in the area," he told AFP.

"More broadly speaking, this fighting illustrates the urgent problem of Palestinian weapons in Lebanon, both inside the camps and elsewhere."

Despite mediation efforts by local and Palestinian clerics, the Lebanese army is determined to accept nothing less than unconditional surrender by the militants.

"There will be no negotiations before the military operations end and the army is in control of Nahr al-Bared," Defense Minister Elias Murr was quoted as saying in Thursday's Nahar Ashabab newspaper.

The fighting has already claimed the lives of at least 141 people, among them 74 soldiers. At least 50 Fatah al-Islam militants have also been killed.(AFP-Naharnet)

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