Refugees warn of uprising over Lebanon bloodshed

BEDDAWI (LEBANON): "We will not let our Palestinian brothers be slaughtered!" shouted a protester at a squalid refugee camp on Tuesday near the scene of three days of deadly battles between Lebanese troops and Islamist militants amid warnings that the unrest could spread.

The mainstream Fatah movement said Palestinian refugees across Lebanon could rise up if the army continues shelling Nahr al-Bared camp in the north where Fatah al-Islam extremists are holed up.   

"If the random shelling does not stop... there will be uprisings in all the camps in Lebanon," Sultan Abul Aynayn, the head of Fatah in the country, told AFP from nearby Beddawi.   

Major Palestinian factions, including the Fatah and the Islamist movement Hamas, have distanced themselves from the extremist Fatah al-Islam and denounced it, warning that the fighting endangered civilians.   

Sixty-five people -- 30 soldiers, 17 militants, 17 refugees and one civilan -- have been killed, according to an AFP count from Lebanese police, army, hospital and Palestinian sources.   

Abul Aynayn spoke during a demonstration by hundreds of Palestinians in Beddawi, home to more than 16,000 refugees, to protest against the shelling of Nahr al-Bared. "This is just a small token of what might happen in all the Palestinian camps in Lebanon," he said at the camp on the northern outskirts of Tripoli about 10 kilometres (six miles) south of Nahr al-Bared.

Many demonstrators shouted they were "ready to be martyrs for Nahr al-Bared" as they burnt tyres in protest.

"We are against Fatah al-Islam, but we are also against the collective punishment of our Palestinian people in Nahr al-Bared," Hajj Ahmad, one of two bearded clerics leading the march, told AFP.

Khalil Khaled, 50, said one of his nephews was wounded by shelling on Nahr al-Bared. "We are one people with the Lebanese, but we will not let our Palestinian brothers be slaughtered," he said.

Umm Hassan, a 42-year-old woman, beat her chest and chanted: "Massacres in Gaza and massacres in Nahr Al-Bared! How many massacres do the Palestinians have to suffer?" 

Abul Aynayn called for an immediate ceasefire to help resolve the "problem" of Fatah al-Islam, a Sunni Islamist group inspired by Al-Qaeda. It is not wholly Palestinian as it also includes other Arab nationalities, although it is entrenched in Nahr al-Bared.

In Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp, Ain al-Helweh near the southern port city of Sidon, protesters burnt tyres and blocked roads on Tuesday, an AFP correspondent said.

Prayers echoed across the camp, with a cleric shouting through a minaret loudspeaker that "Fatah al-Islam protects Islam -- it is not a terrorist organisation."

Abul Aynayn warned that "no Palestinian or Palestinian faction in Lebanon will accept seeing the Palestinian people slaughtered in a collective punishment, as is happening in Nahr al-Bared."

Lebanon is home to about 400,000 Palestinian refugees, half of whom live in about a dozen squalid camps which remain outside the control of the Lebanese government under an arrangement reached four decades ago.

The United Nations says all 12 camps "suffer from serious problems -- no proper infrastructure, overcrowding, poverty and unemployment."