Gunbattle Between Rival Palestinian Factions at Lebanese Refugee Camp Kills 2

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Rival Palestinian factions clashed in a refugee camp in northern Lebanon on Monday, shaking the camp with explosions and wounding at least two gunmen, officials at the camp said. Lebanon's state-run news agency said as many as five were wounded in the battle.

The gunbattle between Fatah Islam and Fatah Uprising started after an argument between members of the two groups in the Nahr al-Bared camp near the northern city of Tripoli, said Palestinian officials in the camp.

The fighting lasted less than 30 minutes, wounding a fighter from each group, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons. The Fatah Islam member was seriously wounded.

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State-run National News Agency said the clashes left at least five people wounded, two of them members of Fatah Islam. It added that officials of Palestinian factions were holding meetings to try end the tension.

But within several hours, clashes resumed in the evening. Residents said they could hear explosions, though the cause was not known.

The situation has been tense in the camp, which is home to about 30,000 Palestinians, since Lebanon's Interior Minister Hassan Sabei announced last week the arrests of four Syrian members of the little-known Fatah Islam group — an offshoot of the Damascus-based Palestinian Fatah Uprising.

Sabei said those arrested had confessed to being behind the Feb. 13 bombings of two buses northeast of Beirut that killed three people and wounded 20.

Hours after Sabei's announcement, Lebanese troops took security measures around the camp setting up checkpoints and searching every vehicle leaving or entering the area.

Sabei also blamed Syria's intelligence agency in the bombings and claimed that Fatah Islam's alleged split from the Damascus-based group was a cover and that the two were essentially the same.

Fatah Islam reportedly split last year from Fatah Uprising, itself a 1980s splinter of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah party.

Fatah Islam denied Sabei's bombings charges, as did Fatah Uprising and the Syrian government.

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