Posted on 06/04/2007 1:11:43 PM PDT by NYer
Deadly firefights in a Palestinian camp in south Lebanon and a bus bombing in the capital opened new fronts for the army on Monday as it battles to crush an Al-Qaeda-inspired militia in a 16-day standoff in the north of the country.
Residents were plunged into panic by the gunbattles between the army and Sunni Muslim extremists which first flared late Sunday near Ain al-Helweh, the largest of Lebanon's 12 refugee camps in the southern city of Sidon.
Two soldiers and two militants were killed and 11 wounded, a military spokesman said, and dozens of families fled to safety before calm was restored later Monday.
But in the evening a bomb went off under a public bus parked in Christian east Beirut wounding at least 10 bystanders, a security source said.
The explosion in the mixed residential and industrial district of Sed al-Baushrieh was the fourth to rock Lebanon since the clashes between the army and the Islamists broke out on May 20 and Information Minister Ghazi Aridi was swift to link the two.
"The bombings and the clashes are connected," he said after an emergency cabinet meeting.
Footage broadcast by Lebanese television showed the bus had been burned out by the force of the explosion. Several parked cars and the facade of a nearby shopping centre were also badly damaged.
The security source said that one suspect had been arrested as police cordoned off the area.
Three people were killed by bombs placed on two buses in a Christian region north of Beirut in February.
The new violence came as Lebanese troops again pounded Fatah al-Islam gunmen in the Nahr al-Bared camp near the northern port city of Tripoli in a standoff that has left more than 100 people dead.
In a bid to contain the latest unrest, the army deployed more armoured vehicles around Ain al-Helweh and boosted security in Sidon where schools were closed and many shops remained shut.
The fighting pitted troops against gunmen from Jund al-Sham (Soldiers of Damascus), a little known group mainly made up of Islamist Lebanese extremists, some of them wanted.
Palestinian factions, which have sole control over security in Ain al-Helweh as in all other camps across the country, were in contact with Lebanese authorities to try to end the confrontation, local officials told AFP.
The latest flareup has fuelled concerns the violence could spread to more of the 12 camps which hold more than half of the 400,000 Palestinians in Lebanon, mostly in conditions of abject poverty, and have become breeding grounds for extremism.
In all, 108 people have been killed in 16 days of bloodshed, the deadliest internal feuding since the 1975-1990 civil war that has added to tensions in a country already in the grip of an acute political crisis.
Jund al-Sham, which has no clear hierarchy or particular leader, is believed to have about 50 militants armed with assault rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.
In north Lebanon, army troops including about 1,000 crack commandos were tightening the noose around the militants holed up in Nahr al-Bared, where both sides are vowing to fight to the end.
After a lull in exchanges during the day, tanks and artillery launched a major bombardment on Monday evening against the squalid camp, where Fatah al-Islam is still holding out in the face of superior firepower.
"We will never surrender... we will fight till the last drop of blood," Fatah al-Islam spokesman Abu Salim Taha told Al-Jazeera television on Sunday.
Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has warned Fatah al-Islam to surrender or be wiped out.
Washington announced that it was considering sending more supplies to the Lebanese army after Congress last month approved a seven-fold increase in military assistance for 2007 to 280 million dollars.
"There are some additional items that are already under consideration that we are talking about with the Lebanese forces," said US national security adviser Stephen Hadley.
The earlier US aid package had already drawn strong criticism from Russia whose Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned of its potential to "destabilize" Lebanon.
It is not known whether the army is planning a ground assault on Nahr al-Bared. By longstanding convention, it does not enter Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps, leaving security inside to militant groups.
Fatah al-Islam, a tiny but well-armed band of Sunni extremists which first surfaced only last year, is believed to have about 250 fighters, according to the prime minister.
“...opened new fronts for the army on Monday...”
Gee - they make this sound like a BAD thing!
You can compare the lebanese army to the german army under the limitation of its weaponry following the first world war : no tanks, no heavy weaponry, no advanced (then) weapons... That did not forbid this german army to build mock up tanks etc... and conduct extensive training, so that when their industry delivered the first tanks, it was the best European Army.
Now coming back to Lebanon. The government of Lebanon kept the lebanese army at its weaponry of 1990, lacking spare parts, ammunition and modern communications systems. Mr. Rafic Hariri considered during his heading of the government (1992-2004) that he did not need an army, and that the Syrian Army was “necessary, legal and temporary”. Those were his own words. He imposed a compulsory draft so that all the population was distracted from what was really going on. And now, his successor, Mr. Siniora, since June 2005, considered (up till now) that he did not need an army too. He channeled all available funds to create an internal security force that proved politicized and unprofessional. Add to this the limits imposed by the US administration on arming the Lebanese Army. For example the UAE presented the Army with a gift of about 10 Gazelle combat helicopters (do you remember the movie Blue Thunder?), they had to be “demilitarized”, the same goes for the 30-meter gunboats, and you name it... The US has lately provided the lebanese army with a number of the ill-fated hummvees, they could have changed them for body armor and helmets instead.
Now that Al-Qaeda is knocking at the door, C-17 cargo planes are landing in Beirut airport, bringing the necessary tools for this operation and only this one. Yet this is not an aid strictly speaking, it has to be paid for later on. Twisted minds are whispering that these weapons are being split between the Lebanese Army and local milicias endorsed by Washington, as Hezbollah does not need arming. I do not believe them, do you?
I heard it. I am about 4 miles away. One Elie Kayrouz was wounded in the explosion. Another person from Bsharri, from the Tawk family was also hurt.
The explosion did not happen in the bus, but in a car parked next to it for 3 weeks without anybody asking for it.
Seems to me that, if we want to reduce our obligations as policeman of the world, other countries have to get over their end of history delusion and build their own defenses. The worst thing about utop;ian dreamers is that they confuse fantasy with reality especially when it comes to war and peace.
Could be. I sure would like to see some curious explosions in Syria and Iran...
The problem with superpowers is that they want to pull all the strings, mount people against each other, and divide to rule.
The western powers created Khomeini and sent him from a Paris suburb to Teheran to topple the best ally the West had at that time. Containment policy of the Soviet Union, they said.
The Qaeda thing, put in place by the Saudis and the US, went out of leach and those who created that monster have to assume their responsibilities. Al Qaeda is using amounts of money counted not in gigas but in teras, coming from the same people who call themselves and the US administration call them “allies”.
Now you cannot stop Al Qaeda unless you eradicate their ideology which happens to be that of the Saudi Wahabi Islam. Nuke Mekka or transform it? It is your deal now. God bless the soul of General Dwight Eisenhower who warned the world from the military industrial complex.
End of History, Francis Fukuyama? may be in another dimension. Like it or not, we all got caught in this spiral called clash of civilizations. BTW civilizations or barbarisms?
You have taken a wide swip at quite a lot of history, and I think you are mostly wrong. To my mind it is more helpful to consider the history of the relations between Islam and the West than to castigate modern leaders too harshly. That history would predict jihad by any ascendant Islam. Rising prosperity creates rising expectations and resentments, and that probably explains our current world better than any other single factor. The income of the poorest has doubled in the last 30 years, and they only want more. In Iraq, btw, average personal income has gone from $10/mo when we invaded to $200/mo now. Talk about destabilizing! The biggest force for change is probqably the TV’s in all those homes bringin in the outside world to people who have been isolated. Not many of them will choose martyrdom over a Mustang.
You cannot measure stability in any remote country just by measuring its average personal income to a scale of Dollars, Euros, Rubles or any currency.
Leaders? let me laugh. These presidents, prime ministers and such are far away from being statesmen like Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Churchill and many others. They assume functions, essential functions on the checkerboard of states, but they are far away with their many blunders from that primordial function of statesmen and leaders.
Then if you talk about rising properties, just consider the ‘prosperity’ of the ‘guardians’ of the faith in Saudi Arabia compared to the large proportion of slums that westerners and kaffirs cannot even see, yet you can notice their proportion now by examining Google Earth. Even for me as a Christian, this kind of injustice in a moslem country is insulting. This is the base of Al Qaeda that is funded by billionnaires like Ben Laden.
As I wrote in another post, I visited Bagdad in 1988. It was heaven with silent yellowish livid faces, not a smile, compared to the hell that is now with its blood and tears...and that wiped out the 2000 years of Christian presence. Not toppling Saddam in 1991 was a grave mistake but not as grave as the situation that resulted from the 2003 war.
Frankly, the words primordial statemen are ludicrous. Much else is silly. You gripe aboup slums but scoff at the effect of rising prosperity. I have no use for people who talk about Heaven in Sadaam’s Baghdad.
You’ve got your world, I’ve got mine, and we are two continents apart. I do not want to use anybody as you do. Using people is all that you know.
When all else fails, insults show when people can’t discuss anything intelligently because they are spewing propaganda they don’t even understand. Whoever you are and whereever you are, historical analysis requires more than strawmen.
Good use of adjectives!
“Thankls. I guess that is just a part of the bumper sticker GWOT, right?”
LOL
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