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Jund Al Sham militants disband in south Lebanon camp
The Islamist faction Jund Al Sham that fought a deadly gun-battle with the Lebanese army last month has been dissolved, a Palestinian source with another Islamist group said Sunday. The Usbat Al Ansar source said that 23 members of Jund Al Sham in Ain Al Helweh camp on the outskirts of the port city of Sidon have joined up with Usbat at a meeting late Saturday, while the rest had laid down their weapons. Usbat Al Ansar has detained three other members of the group on suspicion of hurling a grenade at an army checkpoint last week, in an incident that caused no casualties, he said. "Some of them worked for certain intelligence services ... Today, there is nothing called Jund Al Sham," the source said, declining to be named. The reported dissolution of Jund Al Sham comes as the Lebanese army continues a deadly six-week-old showdown with Arab Islamist fighters of Fatah Al Islam in a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon. On June 4, in an apparent show of solidarity with Fatah Al Islam, Jund Al Sham clashed with the army on the outskirts of Ain Al Helweh, Lebanon's largest camp, in a gunbattle that killed two soldiers and two militants. Under an arrangement dating back almost four decades, the Lebanese army is not permitted to enter the Palestinian camps, where security is the responsibility of Palestinian factions. Jund Al Sham had last week tried to set up sandbag barricades in Ain Al Helweh, but was prevented by mainstream Palestinian forces, another source at the camp said. Most members of Jund Al Sham, a tiny group of about 50 members, many of them on the run, are Lebanese. The Sunni group, which has no clear hierarchy of leader, also includes Palestinians. They fought against the army during an Islamist revolt that broke out on New Year's Eve in 1999 in the predominantly Sunni area of Dinnieh of north Lebanon. The clashes left 45 people dead. Posted by: Fred 2007-07-02 |
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