Fighting in Lebanon Palestinian camp kills eight — new toll

SIDON, Lebanon — Clashes in south Lebanon's Ain Al Helweh Palestinian refugee camp killed at least two people on Monday, medics told AFP, bringing the death toll to eight since fighting erupted over the weekend.

Renewed gunfire and shelling on Monday shook the camp, said an AFP correspondent in the coastal city of Sidon, sending frightened residents fleeing after three days of violence.

The clashes over the weekend had killed five members of Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas's secular Fateh movement and one Islamist fighter, officials said.

Physician Riad Abu Al Enein, who heads Al Hamshari Hospital in Sidon near the camp, told AFP that a 31-year-old man died Monday from his injuries while undergoing surgery.

At another Sidon hospital, Raee, nurse Norma Mohsen said that "today we received one dead person and six wounded" from the camp, the site of frequent clashes between rival factions.

Al Hamshari was treating 13 others wounded in Ain Al Helewh, including a patient in critical condition, said Abu Al Enein.

Palestinian factions said they had agreed on a truce on Sunday but it did not hold.

Dozens of residents, mostly women and children, have fled the camp carrying light luggage, while others took refuge in a nearby mosque, the AFP correspondent said.

By long-standing convention, the Lebanese army does not enter Palestinian refugee camps in the country — now bustling but impoverished urban districts — leaving the factions themselves to handle security.

"We fled from the scene of the fighting, shells are raining in the streets," a 75-year-old woman told AFP, requesting anonymity for security concerns.

'Heinous operation' 

She said armed factions were carrying weapons "to fight Israel, not to fight each other and become displaced".

Ain Al Helweh, now home to more than 54,000 registered refugees, was created for Palestinians who were driven out or fled during the 1948 war that coincided with Israel's creation.

In recent years, they have been joined by thousands of Palestinians who had been living in Syria and fled the war there.

Palestinian armed groups in Lebanon rarely confront Israel nowadays, but fighting between rival factions is common in Ain Al Helweh, Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp.

The latest violence began late Saturday, killing an Islamist and injuring six others, a Palestinian source inside the camp had told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

The next day, a Fateh military leader and four of his colleagues were killed during a “heinous operation”, the group said.

Shells also fell outside the camp, AFP journalists said, with a nearby hospital evacuating patients and shops in Sidon closing fearing further escalation.

Tiny Lebanon hosts an estimated 250,000 Palestinian refugees, according to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

Most Palestinians, including more than 30,000 who fled the war in neighbouring Syria after 2011, live in one of Lebanon’s 12 official camps, and face a variety of legal restrictions, including on employment.