NAHR AL-BARED - Two months since fighting erupted at a Palestinian refugee camp, the Lebanese army on Friday was still mired in a painstaking battle to wipe out the last pockets of Al-Qaeda-inspired militants.
Under cover of intermittent shelling, the Lebanese army pushed forward in its bid to crush the remaining Islamists holed up inside the seaside camp.
The army shelled a small area of Nahr al-Bared that is still controlled by the Fatah al-Islam fighters at two- to three-minute intervals, before the militants responded with automatic gunfire and rockets that hit fields to the southeast.
Army loudspeakers meanwhile blared messages urging the families of the Islamists to leave the camp, large parts of which have been reduced to rubble since the battle began more than eight weeks ago.
Almost all of its 31,000 residents have been evacuated, as well as Palestinian militants not involved in the showdown. The families of Fatah al-Islam fighters -- about 45 children and 20 women -- remain, according to relief workers.
The Lebanese army has accused the Islamists of using their wives and children as human shields, but refugees who fled the camp said the spouses were refusing to leave their husbands behind and feared interrogation by Lebanese security services.
The fighting has killed more than 200 people, including 111 servicemen, since the conflict erupted on May 20, in the worst internal clashes in Lebanon since the 1975-1990 civil war.
While many expect the army to be only days away from crushing the Fatah al-Islam fighters, there are still fears of future instability in a country which faces terror attacks, political paralysis and an acute economic crisis.
"Nahr al-Bared may be ending, but Lebanon may face future challenges," political analyst Michael Young told AFP.
A day after the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television said it had received a telephone call from Fatah al-Islam spokesman Abu Salim Taha after weeks of silence, Lebanon's Ad-Diyar daily reported on Thursday that he had also called one of their correspondents.
"Fatah al-Islam continues to be steadfast, and we can continue for months," Taha was quoted as telling Ad-Diyar.
"We are ready to move to a new level, and there are a lot of cards that we did not yet use. If the army continues the battles, we will use one of these cards," the spokesman said.
"We have hundreds of martyrdom-seekers (suicide bombers) who had prepared to go to Palestine and who are ready to blow themselves up against the Lebanese army," he said.
The military, which has lost twice as many men as during last year's Israel-Hezbollah war, says Nahr al-Bared, like the other 11 Palestinian camps in Lebanon, has trenches, reinforcements and underground structures as defences against Israeli air strikes.
In recent days special army forces, backed by military engineers to disarm booby-traps, have been creeping forward from building to building along the alleyways of Nahr al-Bared.
Meanwhile artillery and tank fire has tried to pin down the Islamists who hide in the rubble, their snipers ready to ambush the advancing soldiers.
07/20/2007 15:23 GMT