LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
May 22/2007
Bible Reading of the day
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 16,29-33. His
disciples said, "Now you are talking plainly, and not in any figure of speech.
Now we realize that you know everything and that you do not need to have anyone
question you. Because of this we believe that you came from God." Jesus answered
them, "Do you believe now? Behold, the hour is coming and has arrived when each
of you will be scattered to his own home and you will leave me alone. But I am
not alone, because the Father is with me. I have told you this so that you might
have peace in me. In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have
conquered the world."
Free Opinions
Fight on, Lebanon.FrontPage
magazine.com, By Elias Bejjani. May 22/07
Don't let a fringe group reignite
tension among Lebanese and Palestinians. Daily Star May 22/07
Analysis: Why might Syria wish to sow chaos in Lebanon now?Jerusalem
Post. May 22/07
Qat is one habit most Yemenis can't - or won't - kick
.By Nichole Sobecki. May 22/07
An army against the clock in Iraq.By
David Ignatius. May 22/07
Latest News Reports
From Miscellaneous Sources for May 22/05/07
Fatah al-Islam Militants Entrenched Behind
Human Shield in Nahr el-Bared's fighting-Naharnet
Renewed Fighting Around
Nahr al-Bared Day After Gunbattles Left Nearly 50 Killed-Naharnet
Fatah al-Islam Vows
Fight to Death vs. Lebanon-Naharnet
International Community Condemns Lebanon
Fighting-Naharnet
U.S. backs Lebanese
troops in refugee camp battle.AP
The Mystery Militia In Lebanon.TIME
Lebanon tightens siege of refugee camp-AP
Report: Iran to buy Russian air defense system via Syria.Ha'aretz
Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon: Facts and figures.CNN
International - USA
Syria or al-Qaeda at work?The Age -
Melbourne
Fighting Continues for Second Day in Northern Lebanon.Voice
of America
Fighting in northern Lebanon enters second day.People's
Daily Online
Lebanon: Army lays siege around camp
Fateh Official Denies Link with "So Called Fateh al-Islam"WAFA
Free Shiite movement points at Syria of north Lebanon violence.Ya
Libnan, Lebanon
Beirut explosion kills one in Lebanon.Ya
Libnan
Tribunal for lebanon: to be passed by force?International
Justice Tribune
Lebanon Army battles ‘al-Qaeda’ militia.Times
Online
Israel's Next War.Antiwar.com
-
US about-face gives Israel green light for Syria dialogue.Ha'aretz
Australians urged to leave North Lebanon.The
Age, Australia
Latest News Reports
From The Daily Star for May 22/05/07
Aridi applauds 'courageous' effort by
soldiers
22 troops, 19 Fatah al-Islam fighters dead
Fatah commander vents fury at 'gang of criminals'
with 'external agenda'
Hajj Hassan condemns plans to use Hariri court for
'political ends'
ISF arrests gang of highway robbers
NGO points to corruption in war-relief effort
Fuel oil spilled from Jiyyeh during war still fouls
parts of coast, stirs controversy over clean-up
How a bomblet took a teen's leg - and is slowly
killing her father
Militant
Killed in Lebanon Wanted in Germany
By VOA News
21 May 2007
Lebanese Security officials say one of the Islamic militants killed in heavy
fighting in the northern city of Tripoli Sunday was a suspect in a failed plot
to blow up trains in Germany last year.
Authorities said Monday that the body of Saddam el-Hajdib was found among the
bodies of 10 Fatah al-Islam fighters in a building raided by Lebanese troops
Sunday.
Smoke billows from the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr Al-Bared near Tripoli in
northern Lebanon, 21 May 2007
Officials say el-Hajdib was the fourth-ranking member of the Islamic group.
Lebanese troops clashed for a second day Monday with Islamic extremists around
the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp. Officials said today at least 46
people were killed in heavy fighting Sunday, including 27 soldiers and at least
17 militants, along with some civilians. There is no immediate word on
casualties from today's clashes. The fighting broke out Sunday after police
raided suspected Fatah al-Islam hideouts in a Tripoli neighborhood, looking for
suspects in a bank robbery. The group is suspected of having ties to al-Qaida.
Elsewhere, one woman was killed and several other people wounded late Sunday in
an explosion in Beirut's Christian sector. It is not clear who was responsible.
The battles are said to be the worst internal fighting since Lebanon's 15-year
civil war ended in 1990.
Some information for this report provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
Fighting in northern Lebanon
enters second day
UPDATED: 17:13, May 21, 2007
The fighting between the Lebanese troops and militants around a Palestinian
refugee camp in northern Lebanon entered the second day on Monday, after the
violence on the previous day left at least 48 people dead, Arabia TV reported.
The report also quoted military official as saying that the soldiers have
tightened their grip around the Nahr el-Bared camp in the northern city of
Tripoli and were shelling positions of the Fatah al-Islam faction at the
entrances of the camp.
There is no immediate report on the latest casualties. Some 30,000 displaced
Palestinians live at the camp, and under a 38-year-old deal, Lebanese police and
soldiers do not enter Palestinian refugee camps. But according to unconfirmed
report from well-informed sources, Prime Minister Fouad Senior is currently
negotiating a break of the rule and seek to get into the camp to wipe out the
Islamic militants. Arabia TV reported on Sunday night that a total of 48 people,
including 23 soldiers, 15 militants from the radical Palestinian faction of
Fatah al-Islam and 10 civilians, had been killed during the Sunday's fighting.
The army officer also confirmed the army's death toll to Xinhua. The fighting
started at dawn on Sunday after security forces raided homes in the refugee camp
to arrest suspects in a bank robbery happened one day ago during which four
masked gunmen robbed a bank in the northern town of Amioun and made off with
125, 000 U.S. dollars in cash.
Militants from the faction Fatah al-Islam then attacked army posts at the
refugee camp, where they are based. The Nahr el-Bared camp has been under
scrutiny since two bus bombings in a Christian area in northern of Beirut in
February. Police had arrested a number of members of the Islamic faction based
in the camp in connection with the twin bus bombings, which killed and wounded
at least 20 people. Source: Xinhua
Don't let a fringe group
reignite tension among Lebanese and Palestinians
Monday, May 21, 2007
Editorial- Daily Star
On Sunday a small, seemingly marginal group of Islamist militants in North
Lebanon demonstrated just how precarious the security situation is in this
country. A rag-tag band of gunmen belonging to Fatah al-Islam resisted the
authority of security forces who had come to arrest them, sparking off a series
of deadly clashes that resulted in the deaths of dozens of people and largely
shut down the city of Tripoli.
One of the most worrying developments of the day came in the form of a statement
faxed to various news agencies that claimed to represent Fatah al-Islam. It
warned that if the Lebanese Army's assault on the group did not end, "our
mujahideen ... will open the gates of hell ... against [the army] and against
the whole of Lebanon." A spokesman for Fatah al-Islam later denied that the
statement had been issued by the group, but it nonetheless prompted fears among
the Lebanese public, who were reminded of the potential for their country to get
caught in the crossfires of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
Fatah al-Islam has said that one of its primary objectives is to train the
Palestinians "to fight the Jews in Palestine" - an activity that they have been
carrying out more than 200 kilometers away from the Israeli border. But
regardless of what the group has said of its stated objectives, the truth is
that to date, the only people to have died at the hands of these militants have
been Lebanese citizens and possibly Palestinians. Thus their sole accomplishment
is that they have added to the suffering of the Lebanese and Palestinian people.
Lebanon has paid a higher price than any other Arab country in terms of lives
and livelihoods lost to the Arab-Israeli conflict. During the Civil War,
Palestinian leaders in Beirut famously argued that "the road to Jerusalem passes
through Jounieh," suggesting that it was necessary for the Palestinians to
defeat Lebanese Christian militias before they could achieve a Palestinian
state. Most of those same leaders later abandoned their struggle and that logic,
but not before instilling great suspicion in the Lebanese people. Sunday's
events ought to serve as a reminder to Lebanese leaders of all political stripes
that there is an urgent need to implement measures that were agreed upon with
the heads of the country's Palestinian factions, all of whom have denounced
Fatah al-Islam. A framework must be created so that a small band of criminals
can never succeed in destabilizing this country and jeopardizing relations
between Palestinian refugees and Lebanese civilians.
Beirut explosion kills one in
Lebanon
Monday, 21 May, 2007 @ 2:30 AM
Beirut, Lebanon - An explosion late Sunday across the street from a busy
shopping mall killed a 63-year-old woman and injured 12 other people, sending
black smoke billowing in the Christian sector of the Lebanese capital, police
and witnesses said. Rescuers reported six of the injuries were from flying
debris and broken glass. Several cars were set ablaze or wrecked in the blast,
which was heard across the city and surrounding hills. Beirut and surrounding
suburbs has been a series of explosions in the last two years, particularly
targeting Christian areas in which the U.S.-backed majority coalition has blamed
on Syria. The blast came after daylong battles between the Lebanese army and a
suspected al-Qaeda-linked militant group in the northern port town of Tripoli
that killed 22 soldiers and 17 militants.
The Lebanese Broadcasting Corp., a major Christian TV station, said the woman
was killed in the Beirut blast when the wall in her apartment collapsed on her
from the impact of the explosion. Most of the casualties were in nearby
buildings.
The explosion occurred across the street from the major ABC shopping center
shortly before midnight (2100GMT) in Ashrafieh, an upscale neighborhood of the
Christian sector of the Lebanese capital. The mall also has restaurants and
movie theaters that operated late, particularly on Sunday, a weekend here.
The bomb caused a crater 1.5 meters (about 4 feet) deep and 3 meters (9 feet)
wide in the road, and police officials said the explosives were estimated to
weigh 10 kilograms (22 pounds). It was not clear whether it was placed under or
inside a parked vehicle.
The blast started fires in parked vehicles and shattered car, shop and apartment
windows. Other vehicles were collapsed from the impact of the explosion.
TV footage showed Red Cross workers helping an elderly man, whose head was
wrapped in blood-soaked bandages. A woman in her night gown was being carried by
a companion, in his pajamas.
The mall's owner, Robert Abu Fadil, said on television early Monday that crews
will work all night to clean up the damage, the broken glass and gutted vehicles
to open for business in the morning. "We were expecting this kind of thing," he
said on LBC TV from the scene, pointing to extra security measures the mall and
other businesses have taken in recent months. "For sure this will affect us in
part, but we've been through more difficult times," he said. "But God is the
Almighty. We will rebuild."The most prominent recent deadly attack in Beirut was
the near simultaneously bombings of commuter buses in the Christian heartland
that killed three people on Feb. 13. The same militant group in Sunday's Tripoli
clashes, Fatah Islam, was blamed by authorities for the bus bombings, an
accusation they have denied.
Sunday's explosion, the fourth in Ashrafieh in the last two years, also came as
the U.N. Security Council is considering a draft resolution to impose the
international tribunal in the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri after
Lebanon's government and the pro-Syrian opposition led by Hezbollah failed to
agree on approving it in Beirut.
A U.N. investigation into the 2005 assassination also has been expanded to
include the series of bombings anti-Syrian groups blame on Syria. A U.N.
investigation has linked senior Syrian security officials and allies in the
Lebanese security services to Hariri's 2005 truck bombing murder while Syria
controlled Lebanon.
Damascus has denied involvement in Hariri's death and the other explosions, but
Damascus was forced to withdraw its army from Lebanon after a 29-year presence
two months after the assassination. Cabinet minister Pierre Pharaon, whose
constituency includes Ashrafieh, said the explosion aimed at showing that the
approval of the international court would coincide with attempts to undermine
Lebanon's security.Source: AP
Tribunal for lebanon: to be
passed by force?
21 Mai 2007
After more than a year of procrastination and political blockage by pro-Syrian
Lebanese political groups, three permanent members of the UN Security Council
are preparing a resolution to impose an international tribunal to prosecute the
February 14, 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri
and possibly 14 other assassinations at that time, according to the French
newspaper Le Monde. The intervention of France, the United States, and the
United Kingdom follows the request made on May 14 by Lebanese Prime Minister
Fouad Siniora for a "binding decision," quotes Le Monde. UN Secretary General
Ban Ki-moon said that "the time has come to take necessary action." A new report
from the international team investigating the assassination is expected in June.
According to AFP, Hezbollah, which is close to Syria, has already warned that
this initiative would sow "division and discord" in Lebanon. Meanwhile the
Syrian president, whose closest officials are allegedly implicated in Hariri's
assassination, again refused "any collaboration" with this potential tribunal.
Free Shiite movement accuses
Syria of north Lebanon violence
Sunday, 20 May, 2007 @ 6:59 PM
Beirut – The Free Shiite movement Sheikh Mohammad el Hajj Hassan said a foreign
regional power is behind the violence today against the Lebanese army in Lebanon
, in reference to Syria which borders the country in the North and East. Hassan
declared that the purpose of this violence was to derail the International
Tribunal for trying the suspects in the murder of Lebanon’s former PM Rafik
Hariri
Syria has been accused of being behind the assassination of Hariri and the other
Lebanese leaders , but Syria denied any wrongdoing.
Syria told the UN it will not cooperate with the International Tribunal . Hassan
urged the UN to protect Lebanon from the Syrians by setting up border patrols
along the Lebanese-Syrian borders. Hassan offered his full support to the
Lebanese army and urged its leader to pursue the terrorists till the end.
Hassan also urged the Palestinian leadership to respect the Lebanese sovereignty
and independence and urged them to hand over the criminals to the government
along with their weapons.
8 dead as Lebanese army
shells Palestinian camp in N. Lebanon
By News agencies
At least eight civilians were killed and 20 wounded on Monday in a Lebanese army
shelling of a Palestinian refugee camp during fighting with Islamist militants,
Palestinian sources inside the camp said. They said the toll was certain to rise
as some areas of the camp, home to some 40,000 refugees, could not be reached by
rescue workers. The shelling occured a day after 57 people were killed in
battles there and in the nearby northern city of Tripoli, security sources said.
Tank shells crashed into the coastal camp, raising plumes of smoke, as fighters
of the little-known Fatah al-Islam group fired grenades and machineguns at army
posts on the camp perimeter, witnesses said. At least 27 soldiers, 15 militants
and 15 civilians died in Sunday's violence, the worst internal fighting since
Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war. Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas'
Fatah movement on Monday condemned the Palestinian militants battling Lebanese
troops, saying the al-Qaida linked Fatah Islam has nothing to do with them.
They urged Palestinian refugees in the camp to isolate the militant group, which
first set up in the northern Lebanese camp last fall after its leader was
released from a Syrian jail. Palestinian officials, who met with Lebanese Prime
Minister Fuad Siniora in Beirut Monday, said the leader was focused on saving
innocent lives and left it up to him to decide whether to send the army into the
camp.
Lebanese Red Cross ambulances evacuated 20 wounded from the camp overnight,
following an appeal for humanitarian access from
the International Committee of the Red Cross.Witnesses said imams called by
loudspeakers for the army to stop shelling the camp, one of several across
Lebanon which host about 400,000 Palestinian refugees, part of an exodus
prompted by the 1948 war that followed Israel's creation.
In Beirut, an explosion near a popular shopping mall in the mainly Christian
east of the capital killed a woman and wounded at least 10 people on Sunday
night, a security source said. No group has claimed the attack and it was not
clear if it was linked to the fighting in the north. Four Fatah al-Islam members
were charged with bombings near Beirut earlier this year.
Lebanese government ministers say Fatah al-Islam is a tool used by Syria to stir
instability in an effort to derail UN moves to set up an international court
that would try suspects in the 2005 killing of former Prime Minister Rafik
al-Hariri.
Militant was wanted in German terror bid
One of the Islamic militants killed in fighting with Lebanese troops in northern
Lebanon was a suspect in a failed German train bombing attempt, a Lebanese
security official said Monday.
Lebanese authorities have arrested four other suspects on charges they allegedly
planted crude bombs on two trains at the Cologne, Germany, station on July 31.
The bombs, found later in the day on trains at the Koblenz and Dortmund
stations, failed to explode because of faulty detonators. German surveillance
cameras are said to have filmed suspects as they wheeled suitcases into the
station.
The body of Saddam el-Hajdib was among the burned bodies of 10 Fatah Islam
fighters found in a building in the northern city of Tripoli after it was raided
by Lebanese troops and policemen during Sunday's fierce fighting with the
militants, the official told The Associated Press. El-Hajdib was the
fourth-highest ranking official in the Fatah Islam group, the official said,
speaking on condition of anonymity.
El-Hajdib had been on trial in absentia in Lebanon in connection with the
failed German plot. It was not clear if Lebanese officials had known his
whereabouts before the fighting broke out Sunday in northern Lebanon, in the
city of Tripoli and in a nearby Palestinian refugee camp where Fatah Islam has
set up its headquarters.
Suppressing Fatah al-Islam
Fatah al-Islam, a Sunni Muslim group inspired by Al Qaida, is thought to have
only a few hundred fighters, but suppressing it is no easy task for Lebanon's
over-stretched army of 40,000.
The army may not enter the country's 12 Palestinian refugee camps under a 1969
Arab accord. Palestinian factions still carry weapons inside the camps, despite
a 2004 UN Security Council resolution calling for all militias in Lebanon to be
disarmed.
The resolution is rejected by Lebanon's biggest armed group, Hezbollah, whose
Shi'ite Muslim guerrillas fought a 34-day war with Israel last year. Some 15,000
army troops moved to south Lebanon under a UN resolution that halted
hostilities, while another 8,000 were sent to control the border with Syria.
Media on both sides of Lebanon's political divide criticised the authorities for
not tackling Fatah al-Islam before. "Who is responsible for the army's massacre
in the Fatah al-Islam ambush?" asked as-Safir, a pro-opposition daily, referring
to a militant attack on an army patrol on Sunday.
Using the army to tackle armed groups in Lebanon has long been a sensitive
issue, given the country's sectarian divisions, but Nahr al-Bared's Lebanese
neighbours have had enough. "We're not sleeping at night. Our children are
terrified. We're not leaving our homes. We don't want anything but God's mercy,"
said Ahmed Frousheh, 55, a farmer who lives nearby.
"The camp has to respect the state. They are destroying Lebanon, inciting strife
all because of the tribunal and Syria."
Fatah al-Islam's leader, Shaker al-Abssi, was sentenced to death in Jordan in
absentia for the 2002 killing of a U.S. diplomat. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the
slain chief of al Qaeda in Iraq, received a death sentence for the same crime.
Abssi, a Palestinian guerrilla in his 50s, was jailed in Syria and fled to
Lebanon after he was released last year. Palestinian guerrillas established
bases in Lebanon in the late 1960s and took part in the civil war that erupted
in 1975.
Palestine Liberation Organisation guerrillas were forced to leave Lebanon after
Israel's 1982 invasion. Refugee camps in Beirut later came under fierce attack
from Syrian-backed Shi'ite Amal militias. Pro-Syrian Palestinian factions took
over the camps, but the larger Fatah group remained influential.
Analysis: Why might Syria wish to sow chaos in Lebanon now?
By JONATHAN SPYER
Print Subscribe
E-mail Toolbar
Talkbacks for this article: 7
Thirty eight people lost their lives on Sunday in fierce fighting between the
Lebanese military and Sunni jihadist operatives near the Nahr al-Bared
Palestinian refugee camp, close to the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. This
outbreak of violence represents the heaviest toll in intra-Lebanese violence
since the conclusion of the Lebanese civil war of 1975-90. The events in Nahr
al-Bared cast light on a side of the Lebanese crisis which has until now been
largely ignored by the international media. This is the emergence in recent
months of an organization of armed Sunni Islamist operatives in the
largely-Sunni north of the country. So far, much of the coverage has suggested
that the group in question, known as Fatah al-Islam, may be linked to the al-Qaida
network. Nevertheless, informed opinion suggests caution before drawing the
simple conclusion that Fatah al-Islam is merely Osama bin-Laden's latest local
franchise.
Fatah al-Islam is a breakaway of a Syrian-backed Palestinian organization called
Fatah-intifada, which itself split from the mainstream Palestinian Fatah group
in 1983. Fatah-intifada has little presence outside of the Palestinian refugee
camps of Lebanon and Syria, and is widely regarded as a tool of the Syrian
regime with little popular support. The group, led by a Palestinian called
Shakir al-Abssi, surfaced in the Nahr al-Bared camp last November and is thought
to contain around 100 fighters from the camp. The group includes Sunni Islamists
of a variety of nationalities, about half of whom are drawn from the Sunni
Lebanese community. Apart from Palestinians, there are also said to be Syrian
and Saudi citizens among its ranks.
While Syrian officials have been keen from the outset to describe al-Abssi and
his group as operating "in favor of al-Qaida," Lebanese authorities suspect that
the group may in fact be a client of the Syrian authorities themselves,
established to act as an instrument of policy in Lebanon, fomenting disorder.
The Assad regime has a long history of utilizing terrorist and paramilitary
groups for such a purpose. Fatah-intifada itself was used by Hafez Assad in a
power struggle with Yassir Arafat in the Lebanon refugee camps between 1985-88.
The regime is known also to have engaged operatives of the Syrian Social
Nationalist Party to carry out assassinations in Lebanon during the civil war
period.
Suspicions regarding Fatah al-Islam center on the fact that Shakir al-Abssi was
sentenced in 2003 to three years in prison in Syria after being convicted of
plotting attacks inside the country. This was an unusually lenient sentence. By
comparison, for example, Syrians suspected of involvement in the Muslim
Brotherhood are routinely given 12-year terms. Al-Abssi, after his release,
turned up among pro-Syrian Fatah-intifada circles in Nahr al-Bared and shortly
afterward emerged as the leader of the new group, Fatah al-Islam. These facts
have led General Ashraf Rifi, head of the Lebanese Internal Security Forces (FSI),
to conclude that "this is a Syrian creation to sow chaos." Which raises the
question, why might the Syrians wish to sow chaos in Lebanon, and why now?
A draft resolution for the unilateral establishment of an international tribunal
on the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri was circulated
in the UN Security Council by the US, France and Britain last week. It is known
that the Syrian regime is determined to prevent this tribunal at all costs,
since it is believed that senior Syrian officials may be found to have been
involved in the Hariri killing. Could it be that the regime in Damascus might
see an escalation of tension in Lebanon as currently helpful - as a tacit
reminder to the international community of what Damascus is capable of when put
in a corner? This is the view of senior officials in Lebanese government, and is
in keeping with earlier practices of the Damascus regime.
***The writer is a Senior Research Fellow at the Global Research in
International Affairs center, IDC Herzliya.