BEIRUT (Reuters) – At least two people were killed in two days of clashes in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, where the mainstream faction Fatah fought against rival groups that support Islamists, security sources said on Sunday.
A Fatah commander was killed on Sunday in an ambush that also injured several of his aides in the crowded, impoverished Ain el-Hilweh camp near the southern Lebanese coastal city of Sidon.
Clashes began the previous day with a failed assassination attempt on a leader of a group sympathetic to hardline Islamists in which one person was killed. That was followed by gunfire and attacks by armed militants at the headquarters of Fatah.
On Sunday, shops closed their doors and some people fled the camp as tensions between the rival groups mounted, a witness said. The Lebanese army said a mortar fell inside a military headquarters with one soldier wounded.
The camp has regularly seen factional disputes spiral into deadly violence.
Some 400,000 refugees live in Lebanon’s 12 Palestinian camps, which date back to the 1948 war between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The camps mainly lie outside the jurisdiction of Lebanese security services.
(Writing by Suleiman Al-Khalidi)
