Two local Red Cross workers were killed yesterday when their vehicle came under fire from inside a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon, hospital officials said.
The workers were killed in their vehicle as they tried to escort a Palestinian cleric, who has been trying to mediate an end to fighting between the Lebanese army and Fatah al-Islam militants, out of the Nahr el-Bared camp, the officials said.
The cleric, Sheik Mohammed Haj Ali, was injured in the leg, said officials from Islamic Hospital in the northern city of Tripoli where the victims were taken. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to speak publicly to the media.
A cloud of smoke hung overhead as scores of heavy artillery rounds crashed into the camp, while tank and heavy machinegun fire strafed suspected militant hideouts.
The militants hit back with sporadic attacks of mortar bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. Lebanon's army is not allowed into Palestinian camps under the terms of a 1969 Arab agreement.
At least 132 people have been killed, including 57 soldiers, in three weeks of fighting, the worst internal clashes since Lebanon's 1975- to 1990 civil war. Eleven soldiers died and more than 100 were wounded in battles at the weekend alone.
Rescue workers have been unable to give an accurate death toll because of the difficulty of moving in the camp -- a sprawling warren of alleyways on the Mediterranean -- but at least 42 militants and 33 civilians have been killed.
The army says the militants triggered the conflict by attacking its positions around the camp and on the outskirts of the nearby city of Tripoli. Fatah al-Islam says it acted in self defense and has vowed to fight to the death.
The fighting has further undermined stability in Lebanon, already paralyzed by a seven-month-old political crisis.
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