Four bombs ripped through Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp overnight on Saturday, ending a shaky lull in violence there that had lasted throughout the U.S.-led war on Iraq. “It seems the Iraq war truce ended in the Ain el-Hilweh camp,” said Maher Shabayta, responsible for a Fatah armed faction in the camp. “The goal of the explosions was to make the situation tense in Ain el-Hilweh.” Palestinian security sources said assailants threw grenades at a U.N. school, into a residential area and near the camp border, prompting armed members of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement to open fire into the air. A fourth grenade exploded outside the home of a Fatah official, Abu Majdi al-Sharqawi, who was inside with his family at the time. The blast damaged the walls of the house. No one was injured in any of the attacks or the subsequent gunfire in the camp, near the southern port city of Sidon. Tension has been high in the camp — site of a string of tit-for-tat bombings — since Islamic militants clashed with fighters loyal to Arafat in August, killing three people. Full Story
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