The Lebanese army on Sunday rejected a conditional offer of surrender by Islamist extremists in a besieged Palestinian refugee camp in the north of the country, a mediator told AFP. "The Islamists' spokesman Shahin Shahin made known an offer to give themselves up to a Palestinian committee, but this was rejected by the military", said Mohammed Hajj, a spokesman for clerics trying to broker an and to the deadly fighting at Nahr al-Bared. "The army is demanding their unconditional surrender, that they hand over their weapons, and the disbandment of Fatah al-Islam", the militant group that has been fighting since May 20, Hajj added.A military spokesman confirmed this to AFP. "Fatah al-Islam is in no position to demand conditions", he said. "They have no other option but to give themselves up to the army and be brought to justice. "However we are ready to guarantee that their families will be able to leave peacefully. Let them suggest a mechanism for this and it will go ahead", the spokesman added.
No more than an estimated 60 of the camp's 31,000-strong registered population remains inside Nahr al-Bared, and these are thought to be the wives and children of Islamist fighters. Soldiers continued bombarding the camp on Sunday with intermittent artillery fire, targeting underground Fatah al-Islam positions, an AFP reporter said. The extremists still control an area of about 15,000 square metres (161,400 square feet). Two rockets launched from inside Nahr al-Bared on Sunday morning hit the Akkar Plain four kilometres (two and a half miles) away, without causing casualties or damage.
On August 2 rocket fire from the camp hit the Deir Ammar electricity-generating station, one of the most important in Lebanon. It is still out of action, and has meant power cuts across the country. Helicopter gunships overflew the camp on Sunday without opening fire, after launching strikes on Islamist positions on Thursday and Friday. More than 200 people - among them 136 soldiers - have been killed since the fighting began nearly 12 weeks ago. This toll does not include the bodies of militants that still have to be retrieved from inside the camp.