A ceasefire to end battles between Lebanese troops and al-Qaeda-inspired militants in northern Lebanon was agreed this evening, the representative of a Palestinian faction in Lebanon said.
A teacher inspects damage to a classroom in a school near the site of an explosion in the Ashrafiyeh area in east Beirut yesterday. Photograph: Reuters
"There is an agreement for a ceasefire which has already gone into effect and we hope that this is a permanent ceasefire," Abu Emad al-Refaie, Islamic Jihad's representative in Lebanon, said.
"Once all hostilities stop, Fatah al-Islam should evacuate all its newly acquired positions and end any appearance of arms," he said.
Battles have engulfed a Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon over the last two days with the death toll from estimated to be 79.
Tonight an explosion rocked Beirut, a witness said. The explosion was in a shopping area in the mainly Sunni Muslim district of Verdun.
Earlier tanks shelled positions at the Nahr al-Bared camp, home to 40,000 Palestinians, with Fatah al-Islam fighters hitting back with machine gun and grenade fire.
Fighting subsided in the afternoon amid efforts to allow an aid convoy into the coastal camp in north Lebanon, but clashes resumed before the UN and Red Cross vehicles could move in.
A spokesman for Fatah al-Islam, blamed the army for the flare-up and threatened violence elsewhere. "If the situation stays like this we will not be silent and will definitely move the battle outside (the nearby city) of Tripoli," he said.
He said the group had lost five dead and nine wounded inside the camp since fighting broke out early yesterday.
Palestinian sources in Nahr al-Bared said the bombardment on Monday had killed nine civilians and wounded 20. The conflict is Lebanon's worst internal violence since the 1975-90 civil war.
Yesterday's battles in Nahr al-Bared and Tripoli killed 27 soldiers, 15 militants and 15 civilians. A military source said the army had suffered no casualties today.
Fatah al-Islam, a Sunni Muslim group which emerged late last year, has only a few hundred fighters and scant political support in Lebanon.
Based in Nahr al-Bared, it is thought to have links with jihadist factions in other Palestinian camps. Lebanon has been racked by political and sectarian tensions since last year's Israeli-Hizbullah war in the south and by a series of unsolved assassinations before and after Syria's 2005 troop pullout.
The cabinet, itself embroiled in a long-running political crisis, was to discuss the fighting later today.
Lebanese government ministers say Fatah al-Islam is a tool used by Syria to stir instability in an effort to derail UN moves to set up an international court to try suspects in the 2005 killing of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.
But Syria's foreign minister repeated that his country opposed Fatah al-Islam and wanted to arrest its leaders.
Tanks shelled positions at the Nahr al-Bared camp, home to 40,000 Palestinians,