JENIN NORTH:

Lebanese Military Advances on Extremist Group at Refugee Camp (Alia Ibrahim, 6/02/07, The Washington Post)

Lebanese tanks and armored personnel carriers, backed by an artillery barrage, closed in on a radical Islamic faction based in a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon, collapsing a tattered cease-fire after a 13-day siege.

Throughout the day Friday, columns of black and white smoke rose from the Nahr al-Bared camp, where as many as 25,000 of an estimated 40,000 residents have fled the fighting. Into the night, rounds fired by tanks and artillery pierced a cloudy sky.

The confrontation, which erupted May 20, has pitted Lebanon's ill-equipped military against Fatah al-Islam, a group that has drawn fighters from Lebanon and across the Arab world into its ranks in recent years. Its leader, Shaker al-Abssi, has said he adheres to al-Qaeda's ideology, and many of his fighters are believed to be veterans of the war in Iraq.

Military officials said forces seized three positions from Fatah al-Islam and destroyed sniper nests on the edges of the camp, which skirts the Mediterranean shore.

How Israeli, eh?

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 2, 2007 7:00 AM