| Ain al-Hilweh clashes | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ||||||||
| Belligerents | ||||||||
|  Lebanese Armed Forces |  Fatah | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | ||||||||
| 2 killed | 6 wounded [4] | 6 killed | ||||||
| 30 deaths At least 200 injured [5] [2] | ||||||||
On 30 July 2023, fighting broke out inside the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon after Islamist gunmen tried to assassinate Fatah militant Mahmoud Khalil, killing a companion of his instead.
Ain al-Hilweh is a Palestinian refugee camp in the Sidon District. It was established in 1948 after the Palestinian exodus of the First Arab–Israeli War. [6]
In the 1980s, most Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon were dominated by Syrian-backed Palestinian groups. In the late 1980s, members of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, after being ousted in other refugee camps, moved on to Ain al-Hilweh. On 7 September 1990, after a three-day conflict with Abu Nidal's Fatah splinter faction, Fatah members were able to establish dominance in Ain al-Hilweh. [7] Sixty-eight people were killed in the fighting and around 300 wounded. It left Fatah in control of an area from the eastern suburbs of Sidon to Iqlim al-Kharrub. [8] Since then many illegal Palestinian militias and terrorist groups operate secretly in the refugee camp with violence occurring regularly. This is especially since, by convention, the Lebanese Armed Forces cannot enter Palestinian refugee camps in the country, leaving the factions themselves to handle security. [9]
The camp is also home to approximately 30,000 Palestinian refugees displaced from the Nahr Al Bared camp where it was destroyed in 2007 during 4 months of deadly fighting between the Lebanese army and extremist groups. Some of the militants expanded into Ain el-Helweh. [10]
In the first day of clashes, Islamist militants ambushed a Fatah military general in a parking lot, killing him and three bodyguards. The general was identified as Abu Ashraf al Armoushi. [11] Source from the camp said an Islamist from "the al-Shabab al-Muslim group" was also killed and six others including the group's leader were wounded. [9]
Fighting continued the next day, with six more people being killed, bringing the death toll to eleven. More than 40 people were injured. A ceasefire was agreed on at 6:00pm during a meeting of Palestinian factions including Fatah and was also attended by members of the Lebanese Amal and Hezbollah. UNRWA has suspended services within the camp due to the violence but had opened its schools to families fleeing the fighting. More than 2,000 people left the camp amid the fighting. [9] Lebanese MP Ousama Saad hosted a meeting in the headquarters of the Popular Nasserist Organisation. It had the presence of the delegation of the Palestine Liberation Organization, factions of the Palestinian Coalition Forces represented by Ayman Shana'a, "Ansar Allah", and members of Lebanese Islamic parties. [12] [13]
According to the Lebanese Armed Forces a mortar shell hit a military barracks outside the camp and wounded one soldier, whose condition is stable. [14]
Clashes were resumed again on September 8, despite an uneasy truce between the militants on August 3, as the accused killer of the Fatah official was not handed over to Lebanese Judiciary. [15] The Palestinian authority in the camp announced on Tuesday that their security forces would launch raids in the camp in search of the accused killers. Fatah officials said that the Islamist group launched an attack on September 7 to obstruct Fatah's plans to remove militants from schools they had been occupying. [15] Five people were killed and more than 50 have been injured in the subsequent clashes, including three civil defense volunteers who came under shelling. [16] [17] [18] By September 11, five more people have died in the clashes, bringing the death toll to ten. The casualties were identified as six Fatah fighters, two Islamist militants were and two civilians. [19]
After numerous failures and breaches of ceasefires, a final truce was agreed upon on September 14. The agreement came after the speaker of the Lebanese parliament Nabih Berri met with Fatah and Hamas leaders the same day. [20] It was agreed that the killers of Al Armoushi would be handed over to the camp authorities.
On 29 September, Palestinian security forces were deployed Friday in a school complex at Ain el-Hilweh replacing the gunmen who had occupied it since the beginning of the clashes. [21] This aims to ensure the security of schools as they will begin late in early October. The security force includes 55 militiamen of various groups which includes the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Asbat al-Ansar. [21]
Palestine – President of the State of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas stated: "The heinous massacre and the terrorist assassination of national security forces who were working hard to maintain the safety and security of the camp and its residents" Fatah – During the funeral of al-Armoushi, Jalal Abuchehab, a Fatah official at al-Rashidieh camp, stated "This heinous crime doesn’t benefit anyone but the enemy, and that is the Zionists, because they are the primary and only beneficiary". [23] Lebanon – Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati suspects that foreign intervention is at play to "exploit Lebanon's" arena he also added: "We call upon Palestinian authorities to cooperate with the army in stabilizing the security situation and handing over those who disrupt peace to Lebanese authorities," Mikati stated. [11] During the second phase of the fighting Mikati threatens with military intervention in the camp stating a “flagrant violation of Lebanese sovereignty” and “it was unacceptable for the warring Palestinian groups to terrorize the Lebanese”. [24] 
Fatah, formally the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, is a Palestinian nationalist and social democratic political party. It is the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the second-largest party in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, is the chairman of Fatah.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command or PFLP-GC is a Palestinian nationalist militant organisation based in Syria. It is a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Jund al-Sham is or was the name of multiple Sunni Islamist jihadist militant groups.
Fatah al-Intifada is a Palestinian militant faction founded by Said Muragha, better known as Abu Musa. Officially it refers to itself as the Palestinian National Liberation Movement - "Fatah", the identical name of the major Fatah movement. Fatah al-Intifada is not part of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Ain al-Hilweh, also spelled as Ayn al-Hilweh and Ein El Hilweh, is the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. It had a population of over 70,000 Palestinian refugees but swelled to nearly 120,000, as a result of influx of refugees from Syria since 2011. The camp is located west of the village Miye ou Miye and the Mieh Mieh refugee camp, southeast of the port city of Sidon and north of Darb Es Sim.
Osbat al-Nour is an armed Islamist group that professes allegiance to a Salafist interpretation of Islam.
Abdullah Shraidi was the former leader of Osbat al-Nour whose near-fatal shooting on May 17, 2003, sparked violence between members of Osbat al-Nour and Fatah militia members in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh in southern Lebanon. The shooting took place after the funeral of family relative Ibrahim Shraidi, a Fatah member gunned down by an unknown assailant. The Shraidi's are a large clan in Ain al-Hilweh and members of the family can be found in opposing factions in the camp. The fighting that occurred left 8 dead and 25 wounded. Shraidi died two months later, in July, from wounds sustained during the shooting after Fatah had agreed to a cease fire.
Fatah al-Islam is a Sunni Islamist militant group established in November 2006 in a Palestinian refugee camp, located in Lebanon. It has been described as a militant jihadist movement that draws inspiration from al-Qaeda. It became well known in 2007 after engaging in combat against the Lebanese Army in the Nahr al-Bared UNRWA Palestinian refugee camp. Following its defeat at Nahr el-Bared, the group relocated to the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp near Sidon in 2008. As of 2014, after the death or capture of many members, most of the surviving members of Fatah al-Islam are thought to have joined other groups in Lebanon and Syria including the Free Syrian Army, Al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The 2007 Lebanon conflict began when fighting broke out between Fatah al-Islam, an Islamist militant organization, and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) on May 20, 2007 in Nahr al-Bared, a UNRWA Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli.
This is a detailed timeline of the 2007 Lebanon conflict.
Kamal Naji also known as Kamal Medhat was the deputy representative of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in Lebanon and a former Fatah intelligence chief in the country. He was killed by a roadside bomb while visiting a refugee camp to calm recent violence.
Mieh Mieh refugee camp is a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, located on the outskirts of Mieh Mieh village in the hills 4 kilometers (2.5 mi) east of the southern city of Sidon. The original refugees in the camp generally came from Saffourieh, Tiereh, Haifa and Miron, in what is now Israel. It was established in 1954 on land leased from private landowners of the Miye ou Miye village. Around the 1990s, the Mieh Mieh camp was located on 60 dunams in Miye ou Miye village. Today, the camp is 1.8 times that size at 108 dunams. In 2003, it had a population of 5,037.
Between 2011 and 2017, fighting from the Syrian civil war spilled over into Lebanon as opponents and supporters of the Syrian Arab Republic traveled to Lebanon to fight and attack each other on Lebanese soil. The Syrian conflict stoked a resurgence of sectarian violence in Lebanon, with many of Lebanon's Sunni Muslims and Lebanon's Christians supporting the rebels in Syria, while many of Lebanon's Shi'a Muslims supporting the Ba'athist government of Bashar Al-Assad, whose Alawite minority is usually described as a heterodox offshoot of Shi'ism. Killings, unrest and sectarian kidnappings across Lebanon resulted.
The Lebanese–Syrian border clashes were a series of clashes on the Lebanon–Syria border caused by the ongoing Syrian Civil War.
The following lists events that happened in 2007 in Lebanon.
The following lists events in the year 2017 in Lebanon.
Events in the year 2023 in Lebanon.
Palestinian internal political violence has existed throughout the course of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, notwithstanding the fact that the vast majority of Palestinian political violence has been directed against Israeli targets. Some analysts have referred to this type of violence as "intrafada", a play on "intifada".
Al-Shabab Al-Muslim is an Islamic extremist Palestinian coalition made up of the organizations of Jund al-Sham, Fatah al-Islam, and other smaller extremist organizations.
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