"Mission Accomplished" at Nahr el-Bared?

File under horrendous reality. Like I've said before, Christopher is there.

Do you wanna live like this? Just asking.

NAHR EL-BARED, Lebanon — Wassim al-Hagehussein was worried. The Lebanese soldier was twitchy, suspicious as he stalked through the dark and powerless grocery store where Wassim worked. It was a day after Prime Minister Fuad Siniora had declared an end to the war over the Palestinian camp Nahr el-Bared, during which fanatical jihadists had fought off an Army onslaught for 106 days. And now, today, the fighting had started up again and the grocery store was in the crossfire. A company of soldiers was pinned down by an unknown number of Fatah al-Islam fugitive fighters.

“Are there any Palestinians in here?” the soldier asked the owner, Rabieh al-Masri, who was a boss and a friend to Wassim. The soldiers had just arrested another Palestinian in front of the store and taken him in for questioning.

Al-Masri deliberately didn’t look at Wassim. “No,” he said. “There are no Palestinians here.”

He was lying. Wassim was a Palestinian from Nahr el-Bared.

Via Christopher.

Islamists battle Lebanon army at second camp

Can/will someone help me out here? Are the members of these Islamist militant groups also refugees or are the refugees just caught in the middle? I've scoured reports and can't find the info.

AIN AL-HILWEH, Lebanon, June 4 (Reuters) - Islamist militants killed two Lebanese soldiers at a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon on Monday in an apparent attempt to relieve pressure on al Qaeda-inspired fighters besieged by the army in the north.

Two fighters of the Sunni militant group Jund al-Sham were also killed in rifle, grenade and mortar exchanges that erupted at an entrance to the big Ain al-Hilweh camp near the southern port city of Sidon, security and military sources said. Witnesses said the fighting at Ain al-Hilweh, started by Jund al-Sham on Sunday night, subsided later on Monday. Three soldiers and two civilians were also wounded.

The clashes were the latest jolt to stability in Lebanon, already shaken by a protracted political crisis pitting the Western-backed government against Syria's Lebanese allies.

Hundreds of civilians fled Ain al-Hilweh, a sprawling shantytown perched on a hillside above Sidon, 42 km (26 miles) south of Beirut. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction dominates the camp, but small Islamist groups have a foothold there and in several other refugee camps in Lebanon.

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