Rabieh al-Masri returned to his little supermarket on the front line of the battleground between the Lebanese army and Islamic militants Monday morning — the first time he had been open for business since the fighting erupted 3 1/2 months ago.
“I think it’s over now,” he said, looking relieved that the battle that left the nearby camp a pile of smoldering, collapsed ruins appeared to have ended in victory for the Lebanese army.
He spoke too soon.
Moments later, the crackle of gunfire rang out from the direction of the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp. Lebanese soldiers, who had been milling around basking in their declared victory, grabbed rifles and ran. They took up positions around the Rabieh Supermarket and on its roof. Shooting erupted from all around. A Lebanese artillery position opened up nearby on a suspected Fatah al-Islam position still holding out somewhere inside the camp.
A day after the Lebanese army said it had routed the Islamic militants of the Fatah al-Islam movement in the refugee camp, small pockets of fighters continued to resist the army’s efforts to secure the camp, a sign of the ferocity with which they have fought despite being heavily outnumbered.
Their leader, Shaker al-Absi, was reportedly among the dead. His wife identified his disfigured body at a morgue in Tripoli on Monday, and Lebanese officials are conducting DNA tests to confirm the identity.
Al-Absi was Fatah al-Islam’s main link to the broader Al Qaeda movement. A Jordanian-born Palestinian, he was an associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian Palestinian who founded the Al Qaeda in Iraq movement, and, like al-Zarqawi, he had associated with Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda movement in Afghanistan.
In November, al-Absi turned up in the Nahr el-Bared camp with about 250 followers and declared that it was under the control of Fatah al-Islam, a previously unknown group, after a bloodless confrontation with the pro-Syrian group that had controlled the camp.
He had recently been released from Syrian custody, and Lebanese government officials say they have obtained evidence from captured fighters that Fatah al-Islam was installed in the camp by Syrian officials with a mission to destabilize Lebanon.
But Lebanon’s army chief, Gen. Michel Suleiman, recently said he thinks the group was an independent branch of the authentic Al Qaeda movement.
“This organization is not the creation of Syrian intelligence, nor is it supported by pro-government Lebanese groups,” Suleiman said in comments carried last month by the Lebanese National News Agency.
“It is a branch of the Al Qaeda that was planning to make Lebanon and Palestinian camps a safe haven from which it would launch its operations in Lebanon and outside.”
The Lebanese army’s stature has soared as a result of the battle, and Suleiman now is being mentioned as a potential candidate in presidentialelections due to be held this month.
The refugee camp had been under siege since May 20, after a raid by troops in nearby Tripoli sparked the fighting.
The lieutenant in charge of the company that took up positions around the Rabieh Supermarket said the army thinks there were no more than a dozen fighters still hiding inside the camp and the fields surrounding it. But he acknowledged he couldn’t be sure.
“I guess there are plenty of them. The more we kill, the more of them we see,” said the lieutenant, who would not give his name due to army rules.
The army later announced that three Fatah al-Islam fighters had been killed in Monday’s firefight as they tried to slip out of the camp. At least 31 were killed the previous day and 15 were captured after the fighters attempted to slip through the army’s lines.
In an address to the nation Sunday, Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora vowed to rebuild the devastated camp, once home to 31,000 Palestinian refugees who fled to a nearby camp. But it could be days or even weeks before it is safe for civilians to visit an area that has been reduced to piles of rubble, strewn with unexploded munitions and suspected booby-trapped buildings. It could be years before the collapsed homes are rebuilt.
After taking cover in the aisles of his supermarket for two hours, the firing eased. Al-Masri decided to leave and not reopen until it is completely safe. The army assured him that wouldn’t be long.
“I think in 24 to 48 hours it will be over,” al-Masri said. “It is over … but they declared victory too soon.”
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lsly@tribune.com
