Toll hits 108 in Deadliest Lebanon Strife
'Pakistan Times' Wire Service

BEIRUT: One hundred and eight people have been killed in 16 days of fighting between the army and Islamist extremists in Lebanon, military and hospital sources said on Monday.

It is the deadliest internal violence since the 1975-90 civil war.

In the latest bloodshed, two Lebanese soldiers and two Islamist extremists from the Jund al-Sham (Soldiers of Damascus) group were killed in overnight clashes near a refugee camp in the southern port city of Sidon, a military spokesman said.

The army retrieved the body of a soldier on Monday from the outskirts of Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp where he was killed on Friday during clashes with Fatah al-Islam militants holed up inside the shantytown.

Forty-five troops and 41 Fatah al-Islam gunmen have been killed since fighting erupted in the northern city of Tripoli and the nearby Nahr al-Bared camp on May 20, sources on both sides said.

One Lebanese civilian was killed in the crossfire when troops attacked a building in Tripoli where Fatah al-Islam militants were holed up on May 20, police and hospital sources said.

Seventeen Palestinian refugees have also been killed inside Nahr al-Bared where fighting has continued to rage, according to Sultan Abul Aynayn, Lebanon commander of the mainstream Fatah movement of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

The previous deadliest bout of internal fighting was in January 2000 when 45 people were killed in clashes between the army and Sunni militants from the Takfir wal-Hijra (Excommunication and Flight) group in the Dinnieh area of northern Lebanon.

There have been much higher death tolls, however, in a series of Israeli offensives against Lebanon since the civil war.●