Lebanese troops, advancing behind a curtain of shell fire, stormed the headquarters of the Fatah al- Islam militants in a northern Palestinian refugee camp on Thursday, local press reported.
The official National News Agency (NNA) said the Lebanese troops are moving to establish control over the terrorists' last pockets of resistance in the Nahr al-Bared camp's Saasaa sector after controlling their headquarters and pushing the diehard terrorists to underground shelters.
It added that Fatah al-Islam militants fired more than a dozen katyusha rockets, indiscriminately hitting civilian targets in the Akkar and Dinniyeh provinces that abut Nahr al-Bared, about 12 km north of Tripoli. No casualties were reported.
Meanwhile, local Naharnet news website quoted a resident of Nahr al-Bared who had evacuated the shanty town during lulls in the fighting as saying that Fatah al-Islam terrorists are entrenched in a network of tunnels that had been established in the 1970s to serve as air raid shelters.
The army command, in a communique, said the troops are tightening the noose on Fatah al-Islam terrorists and renewed its surrender offer to the militants.
The Lebanese army have been battling with the militants of Fatah al-Islam in the Nahr al-Bared camp since May 20. The bloodiest internal violence since the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war has killed more than 200 people.
The Lebanese government lists Fatah al-Islam as a terrorist network aimed at destabilizing Lebanon.
Source: Xinhua
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