New army deaths at Lebanon camp

[frigidmagi]

BBC

At least two Lebanese soldiers have been killed in renewed fighting with Islamist militants inside a Palestinian refugee camp, officials say.

Security sources said they were hit by a rocket fired from the Nahr al-Bared camp, near the city of Tripoli.

Almost 120 Lebanese soldiers have now died in the fighting with the Fatah al-Islam group in the last two months.

The fighting at the camp is Lebanon's worst internal violence since the end of the civil war in 1990.

Much of the camp in northern Lebanon, which was once home to about 30,000 people, has been reduced to rubble by shelling from artillery and tanks.


Map

Lebanon's refugee crisis
Profile: Fatah al-Islam
Lebanese army units in and around the camp were continuing to trade machine gun fire with the militants inside, an army spokesman told AFP news agency.

Fighting first broke out around the camp in May, and has continued for some nine weeks.

Troops are slowly advancing towards the militant group's last strongholds, but regularly suffer casualties because of booby traps and rocket attacks.

The causality count helps one grasp why the Lebanese army isn't being used to disarm Hezbollah, if they suffer this heavily against these guys imagine going up against a well lead and organized force that is well and truly dug in.