Major Gun Battle Rips Palestinian Camp in Lebanon

Lebanese tanks pounded shells at a militant group's headquarters in a Palestinian refugee camp next to the northern city of Tripoli on Sunday afternoon after hours of clashes that left 13 soldiers and several militants dead, along with dozens of wounded.

Security officials said 19 soldiers and 14 police officers were injured in the fighting, the worst violence to hit the northern city in two decades, and hundreds of Lebanese citizens could be seen applauding at the army as it shot into the refugee camp.

A spokesman for the Fatah Islam group, Abu Salim, said two militants were killed and five wounded inside the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp. "Many houses have been destroyed," he told The Associated Press by phone from inside the camp.

A senior security official said a high-ranking member of the Fatah Islam militant group, known as Abu Yazan, was among those killed. Security officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Everywhere the Palestinians have gone, they have wrought nothing but pain and misery. Some of this is self inflicted and some is caused by the failure of the countries where the Palestinians ended up have refused to assimilate the Palestinians into their own countries.

Lebanon was ripped apart by the Palestinians who fled from Jordan after trying to depose King Hussein in 1970-71. Shortly after arriving in Lebanon, the PLO broke the fragile socio-political-religious balance and a civil war left the country in ruins. Israel's entry into Lebanon in 1982 was necessitated because of rocket fire from Lebanese terrorist groups using South Lebanon as a launching pad. Israel left in 2000, but the situation remains uncertain.

Hizbullah started a war with Israel last summer, and they continue to regroup and rearm.

Fatah Islam's terror ties aren't completely clear, though some experts believe that it has ties to al Qaeda while others think that it is a Syrian front group that is trying to destabilize the Lebanese government and bring back Syrian rule to Lebanon. In either case, the group is extremely dangerous and the battle shows that such groups are more than willing to take advantage of a weakened Lebanese government that is still struggling to deal with Hizbullah in South Lebanon without provoking a conflict with a terrorist group that has weapons and equipment that could just as surely take on the Lebanese military as it did the Israeli military last summer.

UPDATE:
The death toll is now 38 and climbing.