Row in Lebanese Palestinian camp turns deadly
Eight people killed in fighting between Palestinian factions in a refugee camp near southern city of Sidon.
At least eight people have been killed in fighting between Palestinian factions in a refugee camp near Lebanon’s southern city of Sidon, sources from the military told Al Jazeera.
The sources said the fighting broke out on Monday between fighters from a group orginally linked to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah group and a rival organisation.
Al Jazeera’s Rula Amin, reporting from Beirut, said among those killed was Ahman Rashid, a leader of a new armed group Al Awda Brigade in the camp. Also killed as Rashid’s brother Rashid Rashid and a bodyguard.
Sources said the clashes was triggered by factional rivalries in the Palestinian camp. At least 11 people were wounded.
The camp remains cordoned off by the Lebanese military.
Fatah and a range of other factions compete for influence in Mieh Mieh and the nearby Ain al-Hilweh, two of the 12 Palestinian camps in Lebanon that are home to more than 200,000 registered refugees.
Tensions in the camps and in Lebanon as a whole have been been exacerbated by the conflict in neighbouring Syria.
More than a million Syrian refugees have poured into Lebanon along with many Palestinians, displaced by three years of war.