AMERICAN LEBANESE COORDINATION COUNCIL

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.”