Lebanese soldiers fanned out along the Mediterranean coastline in northern Lebanon on Monday, hunting for fugitives a day after the army crushed the remnants of a militant group and ended a three-month siege at a Palestinian refugee camp.
The army searched buildings and bushes for Fatah Islam fighters that may have escaped Sunday's battle at the Nahr el-Bared camp. Patrol boats were out looking for bodies in the sea. The camp remained off limits to its Palestinian civilian population which had fled in the early days of the fighting that erupted May 20. Inside the camp, military sappers were combing devastated neighborhoods, looking for booby traps, unexploded shells and mines. Investigators, meanwhile, were questioning captured militants.
The search followed Sunday's final battle between the army and al-Qaida-inspired Fatah Islam militants that left 39 of them and three soldiers dead, as the militants attempted a dawn breakout from Nahr el-Bared. Some of the militants tried to sneak out through a tunnel, while another group tried to escape through a different path. Outside fighters arrived to help them, said security officials.
Army quickly deployed reinforcements to the camp, just outside the port city of Tripoli, blocked surrounding roads and set fires to nearby fields to deny fleeing militants a hiding place. Helicopters provided aerial reconnaissance for the military inside the camp, and checkpoints were erected as far as Beirut and southern Lebanon. Villagers of nearby settlements, armed with guns and sticks, also came out to help the army and protect their houses, the state TV reported.
By the end of the day, the camp was in Lebanese army control and authorities declared victory over Fatah Islam. Officials said the army killed 39 militants and captured 20. It was not immediately known how many militants managed to escape. The army said three soldiers were killed in Sunday's fighting and two on Saturday, raising to 158 the number of troops who have died in the conflict - Lebanon's worst internal fighting since the 1975-90 civil war. More than 20 civilians and more than 60 militants have also been killed.
Prime Minister Fuad Saniora declared victory Sunday "over the terrorists in Nahr el-Bared," saying in a televised speech to the country this was "an hour of pride, victory and joy." At the news of the militants' collapse, celebratory gunfire erupted in villages. Townspeople and troops celebrated in the streets, waving Lebanese flags and flashing victory signs into the night. Other regions celebrated with fireworks, drumming and dancing.
The Lebanese army had military carte blanche to lay siege to a Palestinian refugee camp in order to take off the board approximately 100 Syrian affiliated ‘fighters’. It takes the army three months and costs the lives of 158 soldiers. Not exactly how I would measure an ‘hour of pride, victory or joy’.
To date, no one has even begun to ask serious questions in the international press on how an obscure Palestinian militant group managed to re-supply themselves with food, water, and ammo/weapons while being completely surrounded by the Lebanese Army. But I will give credit to Caroline Glick for being the only reporter I know who can feed my paranoia when she is not busy acting as the rah-rah chorus for Bibi Netanyahu:
The Lebanese army's pathetic performance at Nahr el-Bared tells us something important about the loyalties of the Lebanese military - 40% of which is Shi'ite. During the war last summer, Lebanese forces openly assisted Hizbullah in identifying and marking Israeli targets for missile attacks. Since the war it has paid the pensions to the families of Hizbullah fighters killed in the war.
THE QUESTIONABLE loyalties of the army extend beyond its soldiers. Army Commander General Michael Suleiman enjoys warm relations with Syria. As Barry Rubin reported yesterday in The Jerusalem Post, the Syrians are supporting Suleiman as a potential candidate in the Lebanese presidential elections scheduled to take place on September 25. With a "glorious victory" at Nahr el-Bared behind him, Suleiman is being hailed as a national hero.
Of course, it takes a Lebanese General three months to take out a Syrian backed militant group. It makes a kind of sense. The problem with this kind of thinking is that it leaves my mind mulling over the possibility that the whole never-ending sorry siege was staged managed by the Syrians from the get-go.
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it leaves my mind mulling over the possibility that the whole never-ending sorry siege was staged managed by the Syrians from the get-go.
I doubt that. A militarily strong Lebanon is definitely not in Syria's interest, but it's also not in Syria's interest to expose just how weak and divided the Lebanese "army" really is.
I think it's more likely that these terrorists were taking advantage of Syria's absence from Lebanon, to try and expand their own power. They forgot, however, that the one thing uniting various Lebanese factions is hatred of any palestinian factions...
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