Fresh violence broke out late Thursday in Ain el-Helweh, just weeks after deadly festivities pitted members of Paleostinian President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas
...aka Abu Mazen, a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial. While no Yasser Arafat, he has his own brand of evil, just a little more lowercase....
' Fatah movement against Islamist bully boys.
Ongoing fighting inside the camp on Saturday killed one person and maimed seven others, Leb
...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...'s official National News Agency (NNA) said.
A source in the camp's Paleostinian leadership told AFP on condition of anonymity that the man killed was an Islamist bully boy.
The NNA said a second person was killed and several others maimed outside Ain el-Helweh by stray bullets.
While calm had largely prevailed overnight, heavy festivities broke out on Saturday morning, an AFP correspondent in Sidon said, reporting the sound of automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades.
A public hospital directly adjacent to the camp transferred all its patients to other facilities due to the danger, its director Ahmad al-Samadi told AFP.
Ain el-Helweh is home to more than 54,000 registered refugees and thousands of Paleostinians who joined them in recent years from Syria, fleeing war in the neighboring country.
The camp, Lebanon's largest, was created for Paleostinians who were driven out or fled during the 1948 war that coincided with Israel's creation.
In the worst outbreak of violence in the camp in years, five days of festivities that began in late July left 13 people dead and dozens maimed.
Those festivities erupted after the death of an Islamist bully boy, followed by an ambush that killed five Fatah members including a military leader.
The United Nations
...an idea whose time has gone...
' resident coordinator in Lebanon, Imran Riza, on Friday urged "gangs to stop the fighting in the camp" and to "immediately" vacate schools belonging to the U.N. agency for Paleostinian refugees, UNRWA.
"The use of gangs of schools amounts to gross violations" of international law, Riza said in a statement.
Lebanon hosts an estimated 250,000 Paleostinian refugees, according to UNRWA.
Most live in one of Lebanon's 12 official camps, and face a variety of legal restrictions including on employment.
By long-standing convention, the army does not enter Paleostinian camps -- now bustling but impoverished urban districts -- leaving the factions themselves to handle security.
Civil defense teams worked alongside the Lebanese army to put out fires caused by the fighting.
The clashes erupted on Saturday despite a ceasefire agreement on Friday evening that sought to put an end to fighting in the camp between the rival groups on Thursday and Friday.
The two days of fighting left nearly two dozen dead in the densely populated, walled-off camp.
Over the years, Islamist militants have established a presence in Ain Al-Helweh, the largest of Lebanon's 12 Palestinian refugee camps.
Its estimated 54,000 residents have been joined in recent years by some 6,000 Palestinians who sought refuge from Syria's civil war, all crammed in an area covering no more than two square kilometres (0.8 square miles).
The camp, with its narrow alleyways, is surrounded by a wall erected by the Lebanese army, whose forces control all four entrances
A 1969 agreement between Beirut and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) stipulated that security in Ain Al-Helweh and the other refugee camps was to be handled by Palestinian factions rather than Lebanese forces.
The Lebanese government annulled the deal in 1987, but the army still does not enter Palestinian camps by long-standing convention.
Fatah, which controls the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, remains the most influential actor in Ain Al-Helweh, though rival factions like Hamas and Islamic Jihad threaten its hegemony.
Parts of the camp have also become bastions of Islamist cells of Lebanese and Syrian nationals, which include some fugitives.
One of the better known of them is Lebanese-Palestinian singer Fadel Shaker, who had been sentenced to 15 years in prison for supporting local Sunni extremist groups.
According to UNRWA, the United Nations' agency for Palestinian refugees, more than 80 percent of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon live in poverty.
A Lebanese security official said the three people killed on Saturday included two Palestinians inside the camp and a Lebanese man who was hit with a stray bullet while driving outside Ein el-Hilweh. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said 10 others were wounded.