Ein el-Hilweh: Deadly clashes resume in Palestinian camp in Lebanon

Smoke was seen rising from Ein el-Hilweh camp on Monday, as the clashes reportedly intensified

At least 10 people are reported to have been killed as a result of five days of intense fighting between factions in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.

Hundreds of families have fled Ein el-Hilweh since clashes between the Fatah movement of President Mahmoud Abbas and Islamist groups resumed on Thursday after four weeks of relative calm.

Thirteen people were killed during five days of conflict there in July.

Ein el-Hilweh, near the city of Sidon, is the largest such camp in Lebanon.

The UN says it houses almost 55,000 registered Palestinian refugees, but thousands of Palestinians who have fled the civil war in neighbouring Syria also live there.

The camp falls outside the jurisdiction of the Lebanese security forces.

It is left up to the Palestinian factions within the camp to maintain its security, and disputes and clashes between them are not uncommon.

The UN's Palestinian refugee agency, Unrwa, says the current escalation is understood to be connected to clashes between rival groups that took place in March.

Calm was restored following mediation by members of the Lebanese government, but the violence resumed on 30 July following the killing of a member of an Islamist group and an ambush that left a Fatah military leader and four of his bodyguards dead.

Another seven people were killed and more than 60 were injured before a ceasefire was brokered on 3 August.

Tensions remained high in the camp and the fighting flared up again on Thursday night.

Unrwa said on Sunday afternoon that the clashes had involved the use of heavy weapons, including machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, and that they were affecting a wider area than the previous round.

Significant damage to property and infrastructure inside the camp had been observed, while stray bullets and artillery shells had also damaged property in neighbouring areas, it added.

Palestinian sources in the camp told Reuters news agency on Monday afternoon that a total of 10 people had been killed, including six Fatah fighters and two Islamists. The other two were civilians, according to the Palestinian sources. One of them was reportedly killed outside the camp by a stray bullet.

Lebanese newspaper L'Orient Today meanwhile cited a Palestinian Red Crescent official and a Palestinian security source as putting the death toll at 11.

The Lebanese army said five Lebanese soldiers were also wounded, one of them seriously, when shells hit two bases on the outskirts of the camp on Sunday.

It warned "the relevant parties inside the camp" that it would "take appropriate measures" if its bases were endangered again.