Word: syrians
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...Lebanese government is struggling to check a steadily worsening security climate. In the past month alone, Lebanon has witnessed fierce battles in the north between the Lebanese army and the al-Qaeda-inspired militants of Fatah al-Islam, the assassination of an anti-Syrian politician, and a spate of bomb attacks targeting tourist areas, ruining Lebanon's economically crucial summer tourist season before it had even begun. A week ago, militants fired two Katyusha rockets into Israel from south Lebanon, the first such incident since last summer...
Many Lebanese see the hand of Syria behind the instability presently racking Lebanon. A U.N. investigation has implicated senior Syrian officials in the 2005 murder of Rafik Hariri, a former Lebanese prime minister. Although the investigation is still under way, an international tribunal was established by the U.N. Security Council earlier this month to judge Hariri's killers once indictments are issued. Syria has strenuously denied any involvement in Hariri's death and says it will not cooperate with the tribunal, which it regards as a political tool to pressure Damascus into complying with Washington's demands...
...Wednesday, Walid Eido, an outspoken anti-Syrian politician, was killed along with his son, two bodyguards and six civilians in a large car bomb explosion in Beirut. He was the seventh anti-Syrian figure to be assassinated since the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005. In the north, Lebanese troops remain locked in a bloody three-week confrontation with militants from the Fatah al-Islam faction in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp. Lebanese officials say that the recently formed Fatah al-Islam was sent into Lebanon by Syrian military intelligence to cause instability...
...PFLP-GC are fighting [alongside] Fatah al-Islam," Brigadier General Ashraf Rifi, the head of Lebanon's paramilitary Internal Security Forces, told TIME. This week, Terje Roed-Larsen, a U.N. Mideast envoy, reported to the U.N. Security Council that the PFLP-GC and Fatah Intifada, a smaller pro-Syrian faction, appeared to be growing stronger in Lebanon due to a "steady flow of weapons and armed elements across the border from Syria." Syria has described the allegations as "lies" with the Syrian state news agency asserting that Roed-Larsen's claims were "misleading" and nothing more than "rumors released...
...Syria via numerous remote trails that criss-cross the mountainous border. The Lebanese army tightened control over the bases 18 months ago, manning checkpoints on the approach roads and monitoring movements of the Palestinian militants. A corner of southeast Lebanon near the villages of Yanta and Helwa along the Syrian border, where several Fatah Intifada bases are located, has become a sealed-off military zone. "Everybody is focusing on us and the PFLP-GC because we are pro-Syrian, but we are proud to be pro-Syrian," says Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, a Fatah Intifada security official in the Shatila Palestinian...