Lebanese troops stormed a Sunni Islamist militant hideout in the northern city of Tripoli today, killing seven of them, including a woman, while battles raged on at a nearby Palestinian refugee camp.
Security sources said one soldier was killed and 14 were wounded before a 10-hour siege of an apartment block reached a bloody climax. Militants killed a policeman, his 4-year-old daughter and a relative who all lived in the building.
The standoff, which began shortly before midnight, was linked to 36-day-old battles between the army and Fatah al-Islam militants at the Nahr al-Bared camp just north of Tripoli.
Two floors of the five-storey building were blackened and burned in the fighting. Holes from shells, grenades and bullets punctured its facade. A pool of blood lay on the pavement.
The violence in the north has complicated a political crisis that pits Lebanon's Western-backed government against opponents led by the pro-Syrian Shia Hezbollah and Amal factions.
The army has been struggling to crush Fatah al-Islam, which split from a pro-Syrian Palestinian faction last year with some 200 fighters. Since then the group has drawn scores of Arab jihadis, including Iraq war veterans, to its Nahr al-Bared base.
Foreign Arabs were among the dead in the Tripoli apartment siege, security sources said. It was not clear if they belonged to Fatah al-Islam or another jihadi group.
Troops barred reporters from the building for fear of booby traps. They said they had found much weaponry in the apartment.
Fatah al-Islam leaders have said they have no direct links to al-Qaeda, but sympathise with it.