SIDON, LEBANON —
At least five people were killed in fighting on Monday between Palestinian factions in a refugee camp near Lebanon's southern city of Sidon, local sources said.
They said the fighting broke out between fighters from a group orginally linked to Palestinian President Mohammad Abbas's Fatah group and a rival militant organization.
It was not immediately clear what triggered the clashes in the Mieh Mieh camp, in which at least 10 people were wounded. Fatah and a range of Islamist factions compete for influence in Mieh Mieh and the nearby Ain al-Hilweh, two of the 12 Palestinian camps in Lebanon that are home to more than 200,000 registered refugees.
Tensions in the camps and in Lebanon as a whole have been been exacerbated by the conflict in neighboring Syria. More than a million Syrian refugees have poured into Lebanon along with many Palestinians, displaced by three years of war.
They said the fighting broke out between fighters from a group orginally linked to Palestinian President Mohammad Abbas's Fatah group and a rival militant organization.
It was not immediately clear what triggered the clashes in the Mieh Mieh camp, in which at least 10 people were wounded. Fatah and a range of Islamist factions compete for influence in Mieh Mieh and the nearby Ain al-Hilweh, two of the 12 Palestinian camps in Lebanon that are home to more than 200,000 registered refugees.
Tensions in the camps and in Lebanon as a whole have been been exacerbated by the conflict in neighboring Syria. More than a million Syrian refugees have poured into Lebanon along with many Palestinians, displaced by three years of war.
