BEIRUT - Fatah al-Islam, whose militants on Sunday appeared to be fighting the final hours of their three-month standoff with the Lebanese army, is a shadowy Islamist group that shares ideological ties with Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda.
The Fatah al-Islam fighters, estimated to number 70, tried vainly on Sunday to break out of their besieged Nahr al-Bared camp in north Lebanon but lost about 20 dead and a dozen captured, according to the army.
Fierce fighting continued in part of the camp as military reinforcements swept in to end the standoff.
Last month, the US State Department announced that it had designated Fatah al-Islam, which denies formal links with al-Qaeda, as a "terrorist" group.
"As part of ongoing US efforts against terrorism," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "designated Fatah al-Islam as a specially designated global terrorist" group under US law, the state department in Washington said in a statement.
It said the group initiated hostilities in Nahr al-Bared north of Lebanon's second city of Tripoli with an "unprovoked attack" on Lebanese security forces nearly three months ago.
Before the fighting erupted the camp was home to about 31,000 people, and the group said it was training young Palestinians in the camp to fight "the Jews in Palestine."
Lebanese authorities have accused Fatah al-Islam of working for the Syrian intelligence services, but Damascus has denied any links with the group headed by Shaker Abssi, a Palestinian wanted by both Syria and Jordan.
In February, Fatah al-Islam was accused of carrying out bus bombings in a mountainous Christian area north of Beirut in which three people died.
It denied any involvement, and accused the government of trying to pave the way for an offensive against the Palestinian camps in Lebanon, which house more than half of the country's nearly 400,000 refugees.
Fatah al-Islam announced its creation last November 26, several days after two of its members were arrested by the Lebanese authorities.
09/02/2007 10:32 GMT