Eleven Lebanese soldiers were wounded Monday in clashes with Islamist militants holed up for more than two months in a refugee camp in northern Lebanon, hospital sources said. An army spokesman confirmed that a number of soldiers had been wounded but refused to specify how many.He said that the clashes between the army and Fatah Al Islam militants at the Nahr Al Bared Palestinian camp intensified after a morning lull in the fighting. "The army is responding to the source of fire from inside the camp and continues to remove booby-traps left behind by Fatah Al Islam in destroyed buildings," he said. Army cannons fired a shell every three minutes at the positions of the die-hard militants who responded with machine-gun fire, a witness said.
Almost all of the camp's 31,000 residents have been evacuated, as have Palestinian militants not involved in the showdown. However, around 20 women and 45 children related to the Islamists have stayed inside the besieged settlement despite the military having blared messages to them through loudspeakers to leave the largely destroyed camp.