Fierce fighting between Lebanese soldiers and Islamist militants in the north appeared to have died down yesterday after three days of clashes in which almost 40 people were killed.
The army reported no clashes in the mountains around Sired Dinniyeh town yesterday, but security sources said forces remained on high alert.
The fighting, which erupted at dawn on New Year's Day, has been described as the worst involving the army since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
The sources said the army had earlier recovered the bodies of at least six militants from the Takfir and Hijrah group which rang in the new year with an ambush on an army patrol.
Four soldiers were killed in the attack, north-east of the port city of Tripoli, while an officer and a soldier were captured.
The army, using ground and air firepower, surrounded the militants' mountain hideouts and stormed a radio station, killing an unspecified number of guerrillas.
There was no independent confirmation of the militant casualties as the army controlled reports on the fighting. But security sources said troops had so far retrieved the bodies of at least 22 fundamentalists and were searching for more.
At least 11 militants have surrendered to the army while more than 60 have been taken prisoner. The cabinet held an emergency meeting to discuss the violence, and decided to refer the perpetrators to a special tribunal.
An Army spokesman, Col Elias Farahat, said the Takfir and Hijrah group started out with 150 to 200 members. Most were now on the run, he added.
Security sources linked the Takfir and Hijrah group to a series of attacks on churches. Five men were arrested last month on charges of lobbing bombs at churches in the Tripoli area in October and November.
The assaults, denounced by officials as attempts to upset Lebanon's delicate sectarian balance, coincided with attacks on churches in Beirut which killed one person.
Some Beirut newspapers have also said the fundamentalists included Palestinians, Syrians and Egyptians and associated it with two Egyptian groups: the Islamic Jihad, which assassinated the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, in 1981 and the Gama'a Islamiya which has killed scores of tourists, policemen and civilians in its attempt to establish a purist Muslim state.
Meanwhile, Russia lodged a formal protest with Lebanon yesterday over an incident in which a gunman sprayed its embassy in Beirut with bullets and grenades in solidarity with Muslim rebels in Chechnya.
The gunman and a Lebanese policeman were shot dead and several more people were wounded in the shoot-out, which happened on Monday in Beirut's Mazraa district.
"The Russian leadership is seriously concerned by this barbaric act against the Russian diplomatic mission which put the lives of our people under threat," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
In a protest note handed to Lebanon's charge d'affaires in Moscow, the ministry demanded that Lebanon take urgent measures to ensure the security of Russian citizens and organisations on its territory.
The ministry statement said the Lebanese diplomat had expressed deep regret over the incident and said his country would do everything possible to avoid any repetition.
It later released a second statement saying it was monitoring the situation in Beirut and remained in close contact with authorities there. It said Moscow was not aware of anyone claiming responsibility for the attack.
Lebanese authorities have identified the dead gunman as a Palestinian named Ahmed Abou Kharoub. State television said a note had been found in his pocket which read "I martyred myself for Grozny [the Chechen capital]."
Relatives described Kharoub as a zealot with an extremist view of Islam and a lot of sympathy for the Chechen rebels.