More "Islamic militants" under attack in the Levant

Now in Lebanon too. From the New York Times:

Fierce clashes erupted between Lebanese Army soldiers and Islamic militants in the vicinity of a Palestinian refugee camp [near Tripoli] on Sunday, leaving 22 Lebanese soldiers and 17 militants dead and dozens injured in one of the most significant challenges to the army since the end of Lebanon’s bloody civil war.

The Times reports that "the confrontation with the Islamist group, Fatah al-Islam, raised fears of a wider battle to rout militants in the rest of Lebanon’s 12 refugee camps, where radical Islam has been gaining in recent years."

But apparently not everyone would fear this "wider battle to rout militants" as the Times went on to report:

Lebanese citizens, who hold the Palestinians responsible for sparking the civil war in 1975, cheered the army on the streets of Tripoli and outside the camp.

Fatah al-Islam, the Times recalls, "subscribes to the fundamentalist precepts of Al Qaeda" and its leader was a partner in crime with the genocidal maniac and axe murderer, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia killed almost a year ago in Iraq. The two carried out the murder of an American diplomat, Lawrence Foley, in Jordan.

As "fighting raged throughout the afternoon at the camp, home to about 40,000 refugees, " the Times goes on to report, and "as army reinforcements rushed to the scene and tanks began shelling targets in the camp" many residents of Tripoli were seen clapping and cheering:

“This should have happened from the start,” said one man, who stood in a crowd of onlookers as the tanks fired into the camp. The crowd shouted, “God is great, and God protect the army,” with each shell fired.

“We wish the government would destroy the whole camp and the rest of the camps,” said another in the crowd, Ahmad al-Marooq. “Nothing good comes out of the Palestinians."

The Lebanese blame the Palestinians for inciting civil war in 1975 after Palestinian militias seeking refuge in the country - after having been booted out of Jordan for trying to foment revolution there - instigated the breakdown of the military and social and political order.

This Lebanese civil war raged for sixteen years, only ending with a heavy-handed presence of Syrian peacekeeping forces. In spite of increasing international pressure, Syria only agreed to withdraw its forces in Lebanon after elements of the Syrian regime were widely suspected of orchestrating the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005.