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TRIPOLI, Lebanon: Ten people were killed in overnight clashes between the Lebanese army and Fatah al-Islam militants in the port city of Tripoli, including six Islamists, an army spokesman said on Sunday.
Apart from the Islamist fighters, two civilians, one soldier and a policeman died in a firefight which erupted after the army raided the apartment of a militant late on Saturday, he said.
"The army has found the bodies of six Islamists inside an apartment building in Abu Samra," the spokesman said. "They were killed in clashes with our soldiers in which small arms and medium-sized weapons were used."
He had said earlier that four people – the soldier, police officer and two civilians – were killed in the three-hour battle in the mainly Sunni northern port city of Tripoli.
"We have not yet recovered the bodies because they may be booby-trapped," the spokesman said.
The fighting began when militants opened up with automatic weapons on an army jeep in Abu Samra, killing one soldier.
Six soldiers were also wounded in the clash with Fatah al-Islam, whose gunmen are locked in fierce fighting with the Lebanese army in a nearby refugee camp.
The military spokesman said the dead policeman had lived in the same Abu Samra apartment building which was raided.
"He was killed in exchanges of fire with the Islamists who had taken his 10-year-old daughter hostage," he said. "The police sergeant, his daughter and his father-in-law were all killed, and his wife and two of his sons were wounded."
An AFP photographer said the apartment caught fire in the battle and that the Abu Samra area was now cordoned off.
They were the first clashes in Tripoli itself between security forces and the militants since fighting broke out on May 20 and a siege at the nearby Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp.
The army spokesman said soldiers also arrested three Islamists after the fighting in the city but that a fourth escaped.
Eighty soldiers have now been killed in the deadliest internal violence to afflict Lebanon since the 1975-1990 civil war – more than twice the number of troops killed during last summer's 34-day Israeli war against the Shiite Hezbollah movement.
A total of 157 people, including at least 57 Islamists, have died in the violence.
Three soldiers were killed on Saturday by a Fatah al-Islam booby-trap on the 35th day of the siege, the army said. A fourth was in critical condition.
In a statement sent to AFP, the military warned that "elements of the terrorist network... must not be permitted refuge among the civilians in the camp, allowing them to continue their aggression against our soldiers".
The army urged the population of Nahr al-Bared "to take a courageous stand so it does not fall victim to these criminals who have only one choice – to surrender and be brought to justice."
About 2,000 residents of the camp's pre-battle population of 31,000 are still inside Nahr Al-Bared, with those who fled now dispersed among other Palestinian camps around the country, mostly at nearby Beddawi.
- AFP/so
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