UPDATED: LEBANESE ATTACK PALESTINIAN REFUGEE CAMP

I'M SURE THE WORLD WILL FIND A WAY TO BLAME ISRAEL FOR THE LEBANESE GOVERNMENT'S ATTACK ON THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEE CAMP. THEY'VE DONE IT BEFORE. THEY BETTER BE CAREFUL THIS TIME. IN 1983, "TIME MAGAZINE" LOST A DEFAMATION SUIT BROUGHT BY ARIEL SHARON.

Dozens Slain as Lebanese Army Fights Islamists - Hassan M. Fattah and Nada Bakri (NYT)
TRIPOLI, Lebanon, May 21 — The confrontation between the Lebanese Army and Islamic militants at a Palestinian refugee camp continued unabated today, after an eruption of violence on Sunday that claimed at least 39 lives and left dozens injured. Lebanese troops shelled locations within the Nahr al Bared camp on the northern outskirts of this city, which houses about 40,000 Palestinian refugees. Militants belonging to the Islamist group Fatah al-Islam shot back with heavy machine-gun fire.

Thick smoke rose above the city, and the taller buildings in the camp were visibly pockmarked by bullet holes. During a two-hour ceasefire this afternoon, the Red Cross was allowed to evacuate 16 injured people from the camp. But the intense fighting resumed later in the day. Refugees caught in the fighting who fled the camp said there was growing anger that the shelling was being aimed at Palestinians.

Nine civilians were killed by shelling today, according to Reuters, adding to the 22 Lebanese soldiers and 17 militants killed in the fierce fighting on Sunday. Witnesses said that militants belonging to Fatah al-Islam fired rocket-propelled grenades as well as machine guns today at army posts on the camp perimeter, according to Reuters.

The continuing violence is one of the most significant challenges to the Lebanese army since the end of Lebanon’s bloody civil war. It raised fears of a wider battle to rout militants in the rest of Lebanon’s 12 refugee camps, where radical Islam has been gaining ground in recent years. That, in turn, raised the possibility of a deadly conclusion to the crisis, placing strains on the embattled government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

Security was stepped up today in other camps as concern grew that the unrest might spread, government officials said.

A spokesman for Fatah al-Islam, Abu Salim, told the Associated Press that if the Lebanese Army did not stop the bombardment, the militants would step up its rocket and artillery fire “and would take the battle outside Tripoli.” “It is a life-or-death battle,” the A.P. quoted him as saying. “Their aim is to wipe out Fatah al-Islam. We will respond, and we know how to respond.”

UPDATE: Lebanese Troops Tighten Siege of Refugee Camp; Death Toll Nears 50 (FOXNEWS)

SEE ALSO: HERE'S AN EDITORIAL IN THE LEBANON DAILY STAR DENOUNCING THE VIOLENCE AND ENCOURAGING THE PARTIES TO MAKE PEACE AND TURN THEIR MURDEROUS RAGE UPON.... THE JEWS.