Group makes Lebanon blast claim

NNN did not say whether it verified the authenticity of the statement.

 

The statement, a copy of which was published by NNA, said the attack was to avenge people killed in the three-month battle between the Lebanese army and Fatah al-Islam fighters in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared near the northern city of Tripoli.

 

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More than 400 people were killed, including 168 soldiers, in more than three months of fighting which ended in September 2007.

 

Abdeh is near the Nahr el-Bared camp.

 

Military officials have not identified the cause of the blast that killed the soldier.

 

A military statement identified the victim as Osama Ahmed Hassan, 24.

 

In another development, a senior Palestinian official said on Monday that a would-be suicide bomber who was shot dead on Saturday outside a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, was carrying a false identity card.

 

The Lebanese army shot dead the man as he approached a checkpoint outside the Ain al-Hilwah refugee camp in south Lebanon wearing an explosives belt and carrying a hand grenade.

 

It identified him as Mahmud Yassin al-Ahmed, a 28-year-old Palestinian.

 

But Munir Maqdah, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation security chief in Lebanon, told the AFP news agency that he was carrying a forged Palestinian refugee identity card and that the UN refugee agency had no record of such a person.

 

“The man was not from Ain al-Hilwah. No Palestinian official  recognised his body,” Maqdah said.