BEIRUT: Ten people have been killed and dozens wounded in renewed violence between rival groups in a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, with a senior Palestinian official flying in on Monday amid fears the bloodshed could spread.
The Ain El-Hilweh camp has been rocked by factional clashes since late July between the Palestinian mainstream movement Fatah and militant fighters. The first round left more than a dozen people dead.
Fighting resumed over the weekend after a month-long ceasefire and has since left at least 10 people dead, according to two Palestinian sources in the camp. Six of them were militants from Fatah and another two were extremist fighters.
The two remaining victims were civilians, a Lebanese security source and two Palestinian sources said. One was killed on Saturday when a stray bullet from the clashes reached a town near the camp, the Lebanese security source said.
Five Lebanese army soldiers were also wounded, one of them critically, when shelling hit two of their positions on the outskirts of the camp on Sunday, according to an army statement.
Ain El-Hilweh is the largest of 12 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, hosting around 80,000 of up to 250,000 Palestinians countrywide, according to the United Nation's Palestine refugee agency (UNRWA). The camps date back as many as seven decades to neighbouring Israel's founding in 1948.
The renewed violence has prompted fresh concerns that the clashes could spill over into the adjacent city of Sidon.
Residents fear a similar scenario to the northern Palestinian camp of Naher Al-Bared, where Lebanon's army waged a 15-week onslaught to dislodge extremist groups in 2007.
A senior Fatah official is set to land in Lebanon on Monday and the acting chief of Lebanon's powerful General Security intelligence agency will hold an emergency meeting on the issue.
UNRWA has said armed groups have taken over eight of their schools, forcing the agency to find alternatives to host students as the beginning of the school year nears.
Ten dead as clashes resume in Palestinian camp in south Lebanon
https://arab.news/2gzcf
Ten dead as clashes resume in Palestinian camp in south Lebanon
- The Ain El-Hilweh camp has been rocked by factional clashes since late July between the Palestinian mainstream movement Fatah and militant fighters
The UN says Al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families
The UN says Al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families
- Forces of Syria’s central government captured the Al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade
DAMASCUS: The UN refugee agency said Sunday that a large number of residents of a camp housing family members of suspected Daesh group militants have left and the Syrian government plans to relocate those who remain.
Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, UNHCR’s representative in Syria, said in a statement that the agency “has observed a significant decrease in the number of residents in Al-Hol camp in recent weeks.”
“Syrian authorities have informed UNHCR of their plan to relocate the remaining families to Akhtarin camp in Aleppo Governorate (province) and have requested UNHCR’s support to assist the population in the new camp, which we stand ready to provide,” he said.
He added that UNHCR “will continue to support the return and reintegration of Syrians who have departed Al-Hol, as well as those who remain.”
The statement did not say how residents had left the camp or how many remain. Many families are believed to have escaped either during the chaos when government forces captured the camp from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces last month or afterward.
There was no immediate statement from the Syrian government and a government spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
At its peak after the defeat of IS in Syria in 2019, around 73,000 people were living at Al-Hol. Since then, the number has declined with some countries repatriating their citizens. The camp’s residents are mostly children and women, including many wives or widows of IS members.
The camp’s residents are not technically prisoners and most have not been accused of crimes, but they have been held in de facto detention at the heavily guarded facility.
Forces of Syria’s central government captured the Al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade. A ceasefire deal has since ended the fighting.
Separately, thousands of accused IS militants who were held in detention centers in northeastern Syria have been transferred to Iraq to stand trial under an agreement with the US
The US military said Friday that it had completed the transfer of more than 5,700 adult male IS suspects from detention facilities in Syria to Iraqi custody.
Iraq’s National Center for International Judicial Cooperation said a total of 5,704 suspects from 61 countries who were affiliated with IS — most of them Syrian and Iraqi — were transferred from prisons in Syria. They are now being interrogated in Iraq.
