Lebanese army makes new gains in Palestinian camp

NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon, July 17 (Reuters) Lebanese troops seized more territory inside a Palestinian refugee camp in pitched battles today against al Qaeda-inspired militants, security sources said.

Two soldiers were killed and 14 wounded as troops seized a strategic hill inside the camp, penning the gunmen into a small area and piling pressure on them to surrender, the sources said.

At least 227 people have been killed in all, including 106 troops, since fighting erupted on May 20 between the Lebanese army and Fatah al-Islam fighters in the Nahr al-Bared camp in north Lebanon.

The death toll from the worst violence since Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war also includes 81 militants and 40 civilians.

The current fighting marks a rare venture by Lebanese security forces into a Palestinian refugee camp.

A 1969 Arab agreement banned Lebanese security forces from entering the camps, which house hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who left Israel or were driven out in the conflicts surrounding the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and their descendants.

The deal was formally annulled by the Lebanese parliament in the mid-1980s but the accord effectively stayed in place.

The crackle of automatic weapons and sporadic explosions echoed around as smoke billowed over the devastated camp.

Militants fired some 10 Katyusha rockets at Lebanese villages to the east, wounding one civilian.

Fatah al-Islam is made up of a few hundred mainly Arab fighters who admit admiration of al Qaeda but claim no organisational links.

Some of the fighters have fought in or were on their way to fight in Iraq.

The vast majority of Nahr al-Bared's 40,000 refugees fled in the early days of the fighting, which has left the camp in ruins.

The violence has further undermined stability in Lebanon, where eight months of political paralysis have been compounded by bombings in and around Beirut, the assassination of an anti-Syrian legislator and a fatal attack on UN peacekeepers.

REUTERS SKB RN2001