AMERICAN LEBANESE COORDINATION COUNCIL

Johndroe said the ban is targeted at those “who have been involved or may be involved in the destabilization of the government of Lebanon.”(AFP)

The July 12, 2006 killing of eight Israeli soldiers and the abduction of two others by Hizbullah precipitated a conflict that left nearly 1,200 Lebanese and 160 Israelis dead, much of Lebanon’s infrastructure destroyed and caused severe economic damage to both countries.

“I would call on Lebanon, Israel and key states such as Syria and Iran … to support the implementation of all aspects of Resolution 1701,” Ban said on Thursday.

He stressed that persistent reports of breaches of the arms embargo along the Lebanon-Syria border “constitute a major impediment to the establishment of a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution as envisaged in Resolution 1701.”

He pointed to a report released earlier this week by a U.N. assessment team recently back from Lebanon that urged the deployment of “international border security experts” to help a new Lebanese border force stop arms smuggling from neighboring Syria.

Ban made it clear that Syria, other regional states and Iran “have a particular responsibility to ensure that the provisions related to the arms embargo are fully respected.”

The secretary general also said the beefed-up U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) deployed in the south last August reported “a significant increase” in Israeli air incursions into Lebanese airspace.

“Israeli overflights … constitute repeated violations of that and other relevant Security Council resolutions and also undermine the credibility” of both UNIFIL and the Lebanese armed forces in the eyes of the local population.

Ban deplored Sunday’s bomb attack which claimed the lives of six peacekeepers serving with a Spanish U.N. contingent.

He expressed disappointment at the failure of Syria and Lebanon to demarcate their common border and again urged them to take steps to do so.

And he specifically asked Damascus to reconsider its position that a resolution of the dispute over the Shabaa Farms would be possible only after a peace treaty with Israel.

Lebanon, backed by Damascus, is claiming sovereignty over the Shabaa Farms, the 25 square kilometers of land located along the Lebanon-Syria-Israeli borders which Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and then annexed along with the rest of the Golan Heights.

The U.N. has offered to manage the territory, which has been a central pretext for Hizbullah’s battle against the Jewish state after Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, until a final settlement is negotiated.

Ban said he intends to ask the Security Council to approve Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Saniora’s request for a one-year extension of UNIFIL’s mandate, which expires August 31. The report put current UNIFIL strength at 13,313.(AFP-Naharnet)

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said he knew little about the plight of Australians detained in Lebanon, and embassy officials in Beirut were seeking access to the prisoners.

“There is good information that there is a fifth, but we haven’t had confirmation finally of that,” Downer told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

He said initial reports that two Australians were killed in the fighting were incorrect. No Australians had died, he said.

The detained Australians, all of Lebanese background, have been arrested by the Lebanese military over alleged connections to Fatah al-Islam which is locked in fighting with the army at the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli.

On Wednesday, Australian newspapers said that a boxing champion who left Sydney abruptly is one of those being held in Lebanon on suspicion of terrorist activity.

Ahmed Elomar, 24, who used the name ‘Trigger’ in the ring, suddenly stopped training and fled Sydney two weeks ago, his father Abu Ahmed told The Australian newspaper.(AP-Naharnet)

The July 12, 2006 killing of eight Israeli soldiers and the abduction of two others by Hizbullah precipitated a conflict that left nearly 1,200 Lebanese and 160 Israelis dead, much of Lebanon’s infrastructure destroyed and caused severe economic damage to both countries.

“I would call on Lebanon, Israel and key states such as Syria and Iran … to support the implementation of all aspects of Resolution 1701,” Ban said on Thursday.

He stressed that persistent reports of breaches of the arms embargo along the Lebanon-Syria border “constitute a major impediment to the establishment of a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution as envisaged in Resolution 1701.”

He pointed to a report released earlier this week by a U.N. assessment team recently back from Lebanon that urged the deployment of “international border security experts” to help a new Lebanese border force stop arms smuggling from neighboring Syria.

Ban made it clear that Syria, other regional states and Iran “have a particular responsibility to ensure that the provisions related to the arms embargo are fully respected.”

The secretary general also said the beefed-up U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) deployed in the south last August reported “a significant increase” in Israeli air incursions into Lebanese airspace.

“Israeli overflights … constitute repeated violations of that and other relevant Security Council resolutions and also undermine the credibility” of both UNIFIL and the Lebanese armed forces in the eyes of the local population.

Ban deplored Sunday’s bomb attack which claimed the lives of six peacekeepers serving with a Spanish U.N. contingent.

He expressed disappointment at the failure of Syria and Lebanon to demarcate their common border and again urged them to take steps to do so.

And he specifically asked Damascus to reconsider its position that a resolution of the dispute over the Shabaa Farms would be possible only after a peace treaty with Israel.

Lebanon, backed by Damascus, is claiming sovereignty over the Shabaa Farms, the 25 square kilometers of land located along the Lebanon-Syria-Israeli borders which Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and then annexed along with the rest of the Golan Heights.

The U.N. has offered to manage the territory, which has been a central pretext for Hizbullah’s battle against the Jewish state after Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, until a final settlement is negotiated.

Ban said he intends to ask the Security Council to approve Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Saniora’s request for a one-year extension of UNIFIL’s mandate, which expires August 31. The report put current UNIFIL strength at 13,313.(AFP-Naharnet)

Troops, backed by helicopters, pursued the fighters who had taken refuge in Qalamoun’s forests and caves.

A military official said the militants were eliminated in the operation, but the army was still combing the area.

“The operation has not ended yet because the army is still cleaning the area of booby traps and checking to see whether the (slain) gunmen’s bodies were rigged with bombs,” the official told The Associated Press.

Hospital officials in Qalamoun also said six militants were killed in the clash — three Saudis, two Lebanese and a sixth man whose nationality was not immediately known.

But a security official in Beirut identified the slain fighters as three Saudis, two Syrians and an Iraqi. There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy.

Talal Dankar, Qalamoun’s mayor, said life in the town was not affected because the fighting raged in remote mountainous areas.

“We first heard the din of gunfire before fighting intensified. We saw the army bringing in reinforcements to the mountainous area above Qalamoun,” Dankar told LBCI TV. “The army has eliminated the gunmen.”
The mountainous site was near where Fatah al-Islam militants mounted a deadly ambush on the army at the outbreak of the violence last month.

According to a count from official figures, at least 167 people, including 82 soldiers, have now been killed in and around the northern Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared, where Fatah al-Islam militants have been locked in fierce fighting with the Lebanese army since May 20.

Fatah al-Islam leaders have threatened to take the fighting with the Lebanese army outside the camp if it continues its military offensive.

Last Sunday, Lebanese troops raided an apartment complex in Tripoli suspected of housing Islamic militants, sparking a gunbattle that left 10 people dead, including six militants.

The fighting in Nahr al-Bared has been Lebanon’s worst violence since the 1975-90 civil war.

Last week, Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr declared victory over Fatah al-Islam, but heavy machine gun fire and bursts of artillery shells have continued to reverberate across the camp.

The Lebanese army on Wednesday accused the militants still barricaded in Nahr al-Bared of hiding among Palestinian civilians trapped in the camp and confiscating humanitarian aid sent to them.

In a statement, the army urged Palestinians inside the camp to persuade the fighters to turn themselves in.

Murr said Tuesday that some 300 Islamic militants have been killed or wounded in the fighting, leaving only a few dozen fighters hiding in the besieged camp.(AP-AFP-Naharnet)

Prime Minister Fouad Saniora denounced the “suspicious terrorist attack,” saying “it targets Lebanon’s security and stability.”

Witnesses said the powerful blast set fire in the peacekeepers’ vehicle which was moving on the main road just off Khiam, a major Hizbullah stronghold in south Lebanon.

UNIFIL said in a statement that six troops from a Spanish contingent were killed and two others seriously wounded in an “apparent car bomb attack” while they were on patrol.

Initial reports said five soldiers serving in the Spanish army were killed and four others wounded after the blast.

Lebanese officials said it appeared the explosion was triggered by remote control. No body parts were found in the car, meaning the bomb was detonated from a distance and did not involve a suicide attacker.

UNIFIL commander Major-General Claudio Graziano of Italy said the bombing was aimed at destabilizing the region.

“It’s not an attack against Lebanon and UNIFIL only but against the stability of the region. This attack has made UNIFIL more committed to fulfill its mission in southern Lebanon,” he said in a statement.

In Madrid, Defense Minister Jose Antonio Alonso said Spain will continue to take part in the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon despite the roadside bombing.

“Spain supports and will continue to support the United Nations UNIFIL mission,” he told a televised news conference.

“This mission was deployed to introduce peace and security to a region which has been especially punished, a region which suffered a terrible war last summer and where it was possible to restore peace thanks to the work of UNIFIL,” he said.

Alonso arrived in Lebanon on Monday to visit his country’s troops in the aftermath of the deadly attack. (AP-AFP-Naharnet) (AP photo shows Spanish U.N peacekeepers carrying one of their dead colleagues)

Reliable sources told Naharnet the terrorists included three Saudis, a Russian from Chechnya and two Lebanese.

The clashes, which started with an army bust targeting a terrorist hideout in Tripoli’s Abu Samra district late Saturday, also killed a soldier, a police officer and two civilians.

The police officer, Khaled Khodor, was visiting his father in law Mohammed Abdul Rahman zeeb at the Shahal residential compound when the clashes broke out. The terrorists killed Zeeb, Khodor and his four-year-old daughter, the sources said.

The clashes appear to be a spill over from the ongoing confrontation with terrorists in the Nahr al-Bared camp.

Security sources said the clashes broke out late Saturday as an army unit busted the Shahal residential compound in search of “wanted terrorists affiliated with Fatah al-Islam.”

The army unit, according to the sources, came under fire as the troops tried to search the building.

The compound was pounded by tank cannons and the troops stormed it behind a curtain of heavy automatic fire after residents were evacuated, the sources said.

The army confiscated “large quantities” of weapons and explosives from the Shahal compound during the bust, the sources said.

Army units besieged surrounding olive groves and launched a hunt for other terrorists believed led by a Lebanese Basil as-Sayed, a reputed Salafist from north Lebanon.

One source, however, said Sayed was killed in the clash at the Shahal compound.

The clashes, the first in Tripoli since outbreak of the confrontation with Fatah al-Islam terrorists on May 20, followed a proposal by the Salafi movement in north Lebanon for the formation of a “Sharia Islamist court” to try Fatah al-Islam terrorists holed up in a tiny enclave at the heart of Nahr al-Bared camp, 12 kilometers north of Tripoli.

The majority government of Premier Fouad Saniora has not commented on the call. However, government sources told Naharnet it is “impossible for any Lebanese authority to accept trying any terrorists by any court other than the military tribunal.”

“The military operations in Nahr al-Bared camp have ended, but the camp will remain encircled until the total surrender of Fatah al-Islam,” Murr told Kalam al-Nass on LBC television late Thursday. He was referring to the al-Qaida inspired group.

“I dedicate this victory to the Lebanese people,” he announced.
“The Lebanese army has destroyed all Fatah Islam positions,” Murr said.

“The Lebanese army has crushed those terrorists. The army is combing the area,” he said, adding that troops were now carrying out searches and operations to disarm unexploded ordnance.

Murr said that “the military operation is over,” but stressed that the camp would remain “a theater of operations and under siege” until the militants surrendered.

Military officials said army experts were clearing buildings, streets and houses of explosives placed by the militants.

He said a “large number” of Fatah al-Islam commanders had been killed over the past month, while leader Shaker Abssi, deputy leader Abu Hureira and others were on the run, suggesting they were hiding in the camp among several thousand Palestinian civilians still holed up there.

A few hours before Murr’s announcement, sporadic shooting by army artillery and tanks could be heard in the camp as plumes of black and white smoke rose into the sky.

“What is happening now is some cleanup that the army’s heroes are carrying out, and dismantling some mines,” he said.

His comments came after a few days after the Lebanese took control of Nahr al-Bared’s fringes in what has become known as the “new camp.”

The remaining terrorists are now holed up in a small portion of Nahr al Bared known as the “old camp” – a densely populated neighborhood of single-storey buildings and narrow streets on the southern tip of the shantytown where most of the Palestinian refugees lived.

Murr said that a total of 76 soldiers had died since the battle broke out on May 20, and that another 150 had been wounded. He also said that there are about 100 Fatah al-Islam militants injured in the gunbattles.

That brought to at least 143 people killed in the deadliest violence since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
Some Cabinet ministers and members of the anti-Syria governing coalition have claimed Fatah Islam was created by Syrian intelligence to destabilize Lebanon, a charge denied by both Syria and Fatah Islam.

Sheik Mohammed Haj of the Palestinian Scholars Association, a mediator who met with the militant group’s leaders in recent days, said Fatah al-Islam “has declared a cease-fire and will comply with the Lebanese army’s decision to end military operations.”

He said the militants would abide by conditions set by the army to end the fighting, but he would not elaborate. TV stations and newspapers said the deal included handing over Fatah al-Islam’s wounded and dismantling the group.(AP-AFP-Naharnet)

They were charged with setting up a “gang” with intentions “of committing crime against people … attack (government) institutions … robbery, booby-trapping cars designed to carry out terrorist acts,” As Safir said.

The terrorist cell was also charged with “possession of explosive materials and weapons as well as with forging passports, identification cards and official papers.”

In a related event, As Safir branded as “invasion” the spread of the Islamic paramilitary al-Qaida organization in Lebanon.

However, it said, terrorist operatives working for al-Qaida were being pursued by Lebanese authorities.

On June 8, Lebanese border police at the Masnaa border crossing in eastern Lebanon detained 12 men as they tried to enter the country with forged foreign passports.
The arrests came a few days after three detainees, apprehended in Bar Elias, testified that they belonged to al-Qaida. A statement by the General Directorate for State Security had said the detainees also confessed to rigging three vehicles with explosives.

Lebanese troops had discovered the booby-trapped cars during a raid on a hideout in Bar Elias.

As Safir said the three detainees were “very dangerous.”

An Nahar newspaper had identified them as Fahd Bin Abdulaaziz al-Meghamis, from Saudi Arabia, and Syrians Ahmed Mohammed Osseili and Mohammed Abdul Rahim Abdul Rahim.

As Safir said Lebanese military experts were surprised at the way the bombs had been “very delicately assembled” and at the use of “unfamiliar digital techniques.”

Lebanese security forces were only able to dismantle the rigged cars with the help of Meghamis, the daily said.

A big amount of 500-Euro bills, apparently planned to be spent on recruiting young men with “terrorist tasks aimed at destabilizing security,” was found and confiscated from the Bar Elias network, according to As Safir.

It said further evidence that al-Qaida was swelling in Lebanon came from another source — the alleged confessions made to the police by Saudi detainee Abdullah Beeshi, who was arrested a few hours after the Feb. 13 Ain Alaq bus bombings.

As Safir said Beeshi, who left Saudi Arabia for Iran towards the end of July 2006 upon instructions from two al-Qaidi members, met with Abu Mohammed, a Kurdish-Iranian, in the presence of Saudi Abdul Rahman al-Yehyi in an Iranian city.

About one month later, Beeshi traveled to Lebanon, where he was met by Abu Baker, a Lebanese, upon arrival at Rafik Hariri airport, As Safir reported.

It said Abu Baker escorted Beeshi to the house of sheikh N.R. in the northern port city of Tripoli, where Yehyi, who goes by his nom de guerre of Talha, was waiting for him.

The daily said Talha had landed in Lebanon two weeks ahead of Beeshi.

At that meeting Beeshi was introduced to the brother-in-law of Fatah al-Islam’s leader Shaker Abssi as well as to Saudi Abu Rishaj, who was recruiting young Saudis to join Abssi’s terrorist group at the northern refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared, according to As Safir.

It said that while preparations were underway to send Beeshi to Iraq, the Saudi detainee, together with Abssi’s brother-in-law, identified as Syrian Hani al-Sankari, were “transporting weapons and explosives” provided by Abssi, who was hiding in Nahr al-Bared, to Talha.

As Safir said only three hours after the Ain Aalq twin blasts, authorities arrested Beeshi and Sankari as they tried to cross into Syria through the northern border crossing at Abboudieh.

However, the paper said, in contrast to earlier belief that the two men had been arrested in connection with the Ain Alaq bomb attack, investigation showed that Beeshi and Sankari were not linked to the bus bombings.

It said testimonies of four other detainees uncovered their involvement in the Ain Alaq assault.(AP file photo shows a Lebanese soldier and civilian-clothed security men inspecting a car rigged with explosives during the raid on hideouts in Bar Elias earlier this month.)