Army Refuses to Evacuate Wounded Fatah al-Islam Militants

The Lebanese army said on Wednesday it would not evacuate wounded Islamists from a besieged Palestinian refugee camp unless the last diehard fighters leave with them.
"There is no question of evacuating the wounded from Fatah al-Islam on their own," an army spokesman told Agence France Presse. "We are also asking the fighters to leave and we are committed to guaranteeing them a fair trial."

The army has been struggling to defeat the Al-Qaida inspired Fatah al-Islam militia since fighting erupted in the Nahr al-Bared camp and the nearby Mediterranean port city of Tripoli on May 20.

From dawn on Wednesday, military helicopters launched new raids on positions held by the estimated 70 militants who remain in underground shelters within a small area in the south of Nahr al-Bared.

The raids were accompanied by intermittent shelling from ground forces as well as exchanges of fire inside the camp, where the army continued to blow up booby-trapped buildings, an AFP correspondent said.

After last Friday's evacuation of the wives and children of the fighters, the last civilians in the camp, Fatah al-Islam asked Palestinian clerics who are mediating in the crisis to help evacuate several wounded fighters.

The spokesman for the Palestinian clerics, Sheikh Mohammad Hajj, told AFP he had again been contacted by a representative of the Islamists, saying: "Although the army rejects just the evacuation of the wounded, we are maintaining contact."

The army spokesman said a soldier was killed on Tuesday, bringing to 150 the number of Lebanese soldiers killed in the ongoing battle.(AFP)