Word: nahr
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...Fatah al-Islam's roots can loosely be traced to Israel's 1948 war of independence, when thousands of Palestinians fled their homes for a dozen refugee camps in Lebanon. Squalid, overcrowded camps such as Nahr el-Bared, where the Lebanese army is now battling Fatah al-Islam fighters, became breeding grounds for the Palestine Liberation Organization's guerrilla groups. After Israel's 1982 invasion to evict the PLO from Lebanon, the Syrian regime launched a campaign of its own against Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization, sponsoring a splinter group that called itself Fatah Intifadeh. That faction, backed by Syrian...
...brief lull allowed some of the Lebanese soldiers surrounding Nahr al-Bared a chance to rest after three days of tension and fighting. "They are a very tough enemy. They don't surrender. They will all fight to the end," said one special forces soldier, sitting beside a foxhole smoking a cigarette. Several other exhausted and bleary-eyed soldiers sat in silence smoking in the garden of a small mosque that had been requisitioned by the army as a fighting position. From the back of the mosque the smoking ruins of the camp's first buildings lay only 200 yards...
...Some 50 people were killed Sunday in a series of intense gun battles fought in the streets of Tripoli itself and nine miles north of the city in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, which is also headquarters of the Fatah al-Islam faction. The violence spread to Beirut late Sunday when a 22-pound bomb exploded in a car park in the Ashrafieh district of east Beirut, killing one woman and wounding 12 others...
...Monday morning, calm had returned to central Tripoli, but the Lebanese government vowed to continue its offensive against militants holed up in Nahr al-Bared. The Lebanese government believes that the sudden surge of violence is linked to moves by members of the United Nations Security Council to appoint an international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Though Syria has denied any involvement, many believe it was behind the killing. "The pro-Syrian opposition has reached a complete political deadlock and the international tribunal is about to be passed by the United...
...that Fatah al-Islam is a genuine Islamist organization dedicated to the Palestinian cause. Tripoli resident Mohsen Mohammed, 35, an adherent of the strict Salafi school of Sunni Islam and a sympathizer of Fatah al-Islam, says that the group's popularity has been steadily increasing in the Nahr al-Bared camp. "They help people by giving them food and aid. They are very disciplined and polite and never carry arms in the camp except at times of trouble," he says...