At least three people have been killed and 14 wounded in clashes between the Lebanese army and Palestinian fighters associated with the late Abu Nidal in a refugee camp in eastern Lebanon.
The clashes began early this morning when the army raided what security sources said were offices in Al-Jalil camp of the Fatah-Revolutionary Council - a faction set up by Palestinian guerrilla leader Abu Nidal who died in Iraq last month.
Witnesses said the army left the camp immediately after the first confrontation, in which seven people were wounded, but re-entered several hours later, leading to a gunfight in which a Lebanese soldier and two Palestinian fighters were killed.
At least 14 Palestinians were wounded.
Camp residents denied Abu Nidal's group was there, but Lebanese Interior Minister Elias al-Murr said the raid proved intelligence reports of a weapons cache in the camp.
The confrontation began when camp residents protested that the army had entered the camp without permission, witnesses said, claiming the army had crashed in through the walls of a school at the edge of the camp.
The army later pulled out of Al-Jalil, but surrounded it with tanks, witnesses said.
Some 350,000 Palestinians are registered as residents of Lebanon's 12 refugee camps, most of which are controlled by armed Palestinian factions while Lebanon's army confines its presence to checkpoints outside the camps.
The refugees cannot work legally or own property in Lebanon, which fears that allowing the mostly Sunni Muslim Palestinians formal residence would unsettle a shaky balance of political power among the country's religious groups.