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Your World Today

Palestinian Refugee Camp in Lebanon Under Siege

Aired May 21, 2007 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JIM CLANCY, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Bombs and guns. Mortars pounding a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon as government troops target Islamic militants.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The conditions that these people are living is really subhuman.

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HALA GORANI, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: And a look at the squalid conditions inside those camps, a breeding ground, some say, for terrorists.

Hello and welcome. This is YOUR WORLD TODAY.

I'm Hala Gorani.

CLANCY: I'm Jim Clancy.

We would like to welcome our viewers in the United States now to our continuing coverage of the fighting in Lebanon.

We're going to begin in a war zone. It's on the outskirts of Lebanon's second largest city, seven miles north of Tripoli. The army is in direct battle against Islamic militants, and that battle's intensifying.

GORANI: Well, troops are pounding a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli for a second straight day. It is the worst internal fighting inside of Lebanon since the end of the civil war in the '90s.

CLANCY: And you can see the black smoke there billowing from Nahr al-Bared, a refugee camp with some 40,000 residents. It looks like a small city, and it is. They have been there for more than 50 years, Palestinian residents, refugees in that camp.

But now a new group only founded last year called Fatah al-Islam has entered those camps. It is locked in a fight that began with a bank robbery and investigations into that. When police went to a home inside this camp they found a large cache of weapons, then street battles were touched off. As many as 25 or more Lebanese army troops have been killed.

GORANI: Well, hundreds of troops backed by tanks are wringing the camp, but can't enter under a decades-old accord. However, we have heard from officials that that is not off the table as a possibility if this all continues.

CLANCY: No clear casualty figures yet, Hala, from today's fighting. You know, although dozens of militants, soldiers and civilians, we know, died Sunday alone.

GORANI: Now, we spoke earlier with a journalist on the scene.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NICHOLAS BLANFORD, JOURNALIST: I've been here most of the day, and we've had intermittent gunfire since the morning. You'd have five minutes of calm, then somebody would start up with a machine gun and the other five would reciprocate, and then you'd have very fighting going on for about five minutes. And then it would settle down again.

Now, about an hour and a half ago, the fighting picked up, and it really hasn't stopped sense then. So, just behind me -- I'm in a Lebanese army position parked up there, and just behind me I've got a Lebanese army unit who are firing mortars into the camp. And by going after the hillside (ph), from where I am, you can look into the camp, and I think you've got TV pictures of this now.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

BLANFORD: And the mortar rounds are striking various targets inside the camp, presumably where the Fatah al-Islam militants also firing from. Now, the Fatah al-Islam militants also firing back as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GORANI: All right. Well, the United Nations Palestinian Refugee Agency says it is worried right now that a humanitarian crisis is unfolding inside the camp. There are tens of thousands of ordinary residents there caught in the crossfire. It is calling for a cease- fire so the wounded can be evacuated.

Let's bring in our Beirut bureau chief, Brent Sadler, who's in New York right now, for more on all of these developments.

Brent, as you watch this from the outside looking in, what are your first initial thoughts?

BRENT SADLER, CNN BEIRUT BUREAU CHIEF: Well, it reminds me very much of the mid-1980s, when there was the very well-known camps war, when Palestinians inside the camps were being besieged by other Lebanese Muslim militias at that time during the civil war. So these pictures and these horrific sounds of machine gunfire and tank rounds and shell fire really do throw my mind back to those very dark days in the middle of the civil war. This is, in fact, the heaviest fighting we've seen since the end of that civil war some 15, 16 years ago.

The problem is -- and I've been inside these camps when they have been under attack during the civil war -- there's really nowhere to hide. Very few places to shelter.

These Palestinian camps are crammed. In this case, Nahr al- Bared, in Tripoli, with some 40,000 Palestinian refugees.

They live on top of each other. They have done for the best part of 60 years. And really, the sheltering level is very, very difficult. This is why we're seeing civilians caught in the crossfire.

Now, this group that Jim was talking about, Fatah al-Islam, came out of the shadows about a year ago. But we have seen press conferences by its leader, a man called Shakir al-Abssi, who was sentenced to death in absentia by a Jordanian court some five years ago for the murder of a U.S. diplomat at that time. Interestingly enough, because Fatah al-Islam has an al Qaeda-style ideology, the leader of this group at the center of this warfare now was very much closely associated with the former leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed by U.S. forces.

So that gives you context, Hala, of the type of thinking, the type of ideology that drives this group. And it's quite possibly, according to my sources in Lebanon that I've been speaking to, that those that oppose the presence of this hard-lined Islamic group inside the camp may well be fighting Palestinian other factions, fighting this extremist faction, on top of what the Lebanese army is doing -- Hala.

GORANI: So we might be seeing a battle between the Islamist group and the army and between Palestinians, among Palestinians. But the big question today is, will this spill out of the camps into Lebanon? Will this inflame other parts of the country, Brent?

SADLER: Well, Hala, the bigger picture here -- and if you talk to any of the politicians and ministers in the western-backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon, they will tell you that in the last 48 hours or so, the outbreak of violence in that Nahr al-Bared refugee camp there, together with a bomb explosion late last night in Lebanon outside a shopping mall, is an attempt by anti- democratic forces, they would say, colluding with Syria to try to destabilize Lebanon and to bring about this sort of bloody carnage and chaos at a crucial time this week in New York, because it's here, in New York this week, that the United Nations Security Council is considering a draft resolution that will push through an international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri.

And those pro-government politicians will tell you this is an attempt to strike at the underbelly of insecurity in Lebanon, to show the world that if a Chapter 7 resolution forces through this international tribunal, bypassing the Lebanese parliament, then this is the sort of trouble you're going to see now, and it could get very much worse -- Hala.

GORANI: All right. So many theories to consider.

Thank you very much for your analysis.

Our Bureau chief, Brent Sadler -- Jim. CLANCY: Well, the Lebanese government is looking on at these pictures that you're witnessing. These are live pictures coming from the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, some seven miles north of Lebanon's second largest city, Tripoli.

This is just a few miles, if even that, from the Syrian -- the northern Syrian border. At this hour, we understand those borders have been shut down.

The government did not anticipate getting into this fight. There was a lot of concern about this group, a lot of suspicion, more than suspicion.

The government had said this group had actually four of its members, Syrians, had claimed responsibility and Syrian backing for some bombings in Bikfaya (ph), in a northern Christian enclave in Lebanon just on February 13th of this year. But the government now caught in the middle, says it is working with the other Palestinian groups like Hamas and Fatah to try to counter these groups, but it's being very mindful of civilian casualties.

We talked a short time ago with Mohamad Chatah. He's the senior adviser to the Lebanese prime minister. He said Lebanon didn't go looking for this fight.

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MOHAMAD CHATAH, SR. ADVISER TO LEBANESE PRIME MINISTER: The problem is that the Lebanese government has been drawn into this by a renegade group, a violent extremist group that has been implicated in violent terrorist actions in Lebanon, has been drawn into this by that group going out and literally killing Lebanese soldiers who were not engaged in combat. And, of course, the Lebanese government had no choice but to try to assert the government (INAUDIBLE) in the vicinity of the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp.

It is, of course a situation. The government is concerned about the situation of civilians in that area, and is doing all it can to avoid any civilian casualties. And frankly, that's the main reason why you have the fighting continuing with this renegade group taking advantage of the fact that the Lebanese government is, as I said, concerned about civilians. And it has not gone all out to enter the camp and end this violence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GORANI: Well, the White House has issued a statement on the raging violence in Lebanon. It says, "We are concerned about the violence taking place there and the civilian casualties. We believe the parties should take a step back from violence, and are firm believers in Lebanon's democracy and sovereignty and support Prime Minister Siniora's efforts to deal with fighting in the country."

A statement from the White House there as the fighting continues, and as we continue to broadcast these live pictures of the smoke billowing from over that Palestinian refugee camp -- Jim. CLANCY: Now, you can hear the tank fire. You can hear -- those are mortars, some of them going off, and a lot of small arms, as well as machine gunfire just crackling in the background. The violence between the Lebanese army and this group brings together, really, what is three separate conflicts that face Lebanon today. That, the view of a respected journalist, Rami Khouri, of "The Daily Star".

He explains.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAMI KHOURI, REPORTER, "THE DAILY STAR": This is not a very simple situation because you have actually three converging conflicts that have come together. You have the tradition of Lebanese versus Palestinian camps over the years. You have the recent tradition of Syrian and Lebanese tensions. And many people in Lebanon accusing the Syrians of being behind this kind of destabilizing process, which the Syrians vehemently deny. And you have the most recent one, which is the global war on terror and the expansion of these (INAUDIBLE) terrorist groups.

All three of these dynamics and these conflicts have now converged together in this one area in Lebanon. It's not a surprise. People have been talking about this for months and months, that these groups have been forming in Lebanon.

The links with al Qaeda are not very clear, whether they are operationally linked or not. They certainly share the same ideology as al Qaeda. And Lebanon is a proxy battlefield, unfortunately, for many of these regional global conflicts, and some of these tensions which are localized now in the north could easily spill over into other parts of the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CLANCY: Some of these live pictures coming to us now from the Lebanese Broadcasting Company. The smoke-smeared skies north of Tripoli, Lebanon, outside the Nahr al-Bared cold river refugee camp that's been in place for more than 50 years, home to some 40,000 people. An exact count isn't even possible, but it's thought somewhere between 35,000, 40,000 people are inside that camp right now.

The group that's really involved in this, Fatah al-Islam, is only believed to have about 200 fighters. There might be more than that. There is no doubt they are very well armed.

Let's go now and talk with our own Anthony Mills, who has been covering Lebanon for CNN throughout the last year. He joins us from London.

Anthony, as we have seen this unfold, I am led to believe now that the fighting here is getting even worse. What does that signal in your mind?

ANTHONY MILLS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, as you rightly mentioned, Jim, this group, even though it appears to be a fringe group, certainly in terms of any backing it may have from other Palestinian factions, is very well armed. And that begs the question as to how it obtained those weapons, especially since this is a group that no one had heard of up until a few months ago.

But it is very well armed. It is fighting back against this sustained pounding by the Lebanese army over the last 48 hours or so. And it is fighting back strong. And the Lebanese army at the moment does not appear to be gaining the upper hand, certainly in terms of eradicating that resistance from within the camp -- Jim.

CLANCY: Over the past two decades or more, successive governments, movements have tried to play the Palestinian card. It was just inside Tripoli at a nearby refugee camp called the Badawi refugee camp, of course, in 1983 that Yasser Arafat made his last stand, if you want to call it that, in Lebanon.

He was forced to depart. But he had steadfastly refused to allow Hamas or anyone else to try to take the Palestinian card, Hezbollah, or al Qaeda, for that matter. But here we have an al Qaeda-linked group, this ideology, trying to tap the energy, the resentment, the bitterness inside any refugee camp, Palestinian refugee camp, across the Middle East.

How important is it to al Qaeda to gain a foothold here? And why?

MILLS: Well, Jim, you're absolutely right. The Palestinian camps, the Palestinians in Lebanon, they have been at the center of Lebanese politics and, indeed, its misfortunes over decades. Lebanese society has been split for decades about the issue of the Palestinians, about decades ago whether they should be using Lebanon as a springboard for activities, for fighting against Israel. And now, here today, we have the Palestinian dynamic yet again, although it's a very different one.

This time, we have these Sunni extremists, these Sunni-Muslim insurgents who are using this Palestinian refugee camp. They're making very good use of the fact that it is a big, sprawling, densely- populated area that has been around for decades and is off limits to the Lebanese army. And yes, they probably are tapping into the resentment and anger among many people living in those camps. That is how they recruit as well.

But the fact of the matter is that for the moment, initially, until these aggressive bombardments kicked off, this group had very little support among regular Lebanese, certainly, and even among regular Palestinians, whether in this camp or in other camps. But with the kind of bombardments we're seeing, Jim, we can imagine that people living in these camps, the tens of thousands of people living in these camps, and the close to 400,000 people living in camps across Lebanon, are going to be very angry, possibly, about the scale of the bombardment, the perceived lack of compassion for civilians, and that could aggravate the situation -- Jim.

CLANCY: Well, let's listen to Richard Cook, who is head of the United Nations Relief Works Agency that deals with these Palestinian camps. He talked with us a little bit earlier. Let's hear what he had to say about the camps.

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RICHARD COOK, DIRECTOR, UNRWA AFFAIRS LEBANON: These camps are very, very densely-populated. Some of the most densely-populated areas in the world. And as a result of this, any such conflict can only mean that civilians. that innocent people are being hurt. And we -- although we have no particular figures at the moment of how many people have been hurt, we certainly know that it is a large number.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CLANCY: All right. That lays out the problem of the camps.

We're going to get more on that from Jonathan Mann and "Insight" in a minute.

Anthony, before I let you go, let me just put the question to you. You know, a lot of people surprised at how the Lebanese army has come in here. How much popular support do they have? How much support does this group, this Fatah al-Islam, have among Palestinians?

MILLS: Well, as I say, Jim, initially I think this group, Fatah al-Islam, probably didn't have very much popular support at all, certainly among Lebanese. And also among Palestinians.

And there is support for the Lebanese army in its actions against these Palestinians. Probably for that reason, because this Palestinian group is a fringe group, it's perceived to be a fringe group by regular Lebanese, by regular Palestinians, as well, and that may well be why the army also has acted in this way and appears to be considering, Jim, entering that camp.

We don't know if that's actually going to happen, but it appears to be considering the possibility of doing that and disregarding the accord, the 1969 accord, barring it from doing so. So, it probably feels that it is riding a wave, if you will, of popular support among regular Lebanese. But that doesn't mean, Jim, that if it does go into this camp that it is going to be able to end this problem, that it's going to be able to resolve this issue, and that things will just go back to the peace and quiet, as it were -- Jim.

CLANCY: Tony Mills, reporting there to us from London with an intimate view of what's going on in Lebanon, at his home in Lebanon right now.

It should be noted a little bit earlier we talked with a Lebanese official who told us in no uncertain terms that the plan that the Lebanese army's trying to put in here is a plan not to go into the camp, but to seal it off and to corner, in his words, to corner those militants that are fighting against the Lebanese army right now.

GORANI: All right. Nearly 60 years after the creation of the state of Israel and 40 years since the Six-Day War, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have lived in those refugee camps, including the one today that is the scene of this intense battle. There are 12 camps in Lebanon, and it's no secret that extremist groups have been moving in, recruiting.

Jonathan Mann joins us now with some "Insight" on that -- Jonathan.

JONATHAN MANN, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: They are isolated from Lebanese life, they are denied basic rights, they're blamed for Lebanon's tragedies. They're not only the poorest people in the country, they may be the poorest Palestinian refugee population in the world. Which is saying a lot.

So, call their communities refugee camps, or call them cauldrons.

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KHALIL MAKKAWI, LEBANESE PALESTINIAN DIALOGUE COMMITTEE: The situation speaks for itself. Those camps have become a fertile ground for the fundamentalists, the extremists.

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MANN: There are 12 officially recognized Palestinian refugee camps, most of them along the coast near the country's major cities. You can't see the cities names, but we have them clustered around Tripoli, around Beirut, and then (INAUDIBLE) in the south. Between 350,000 and 400,000 people, roughly one-tenth of Lebanon's population.

Nahr al-Bared, which we're reporting on today, is one of the largest camps, with about 30,000 or 40,000 people. It's right outside Tripoli.

The most infamous of the camps is Shatilla, in southern Beirut, with about 8,000 people. Sabra, an unofficial camp next door, and Shatilla, of course, are known around the world for the civilian refugees massacred in them after Israel invaded back in 1982.

The largest camp and some say the meanest of them is Ein el- Hilweh, home to 75,000 refugees outside of Sidon. More than a dozen Palestinian factions have been competing for control, and sometimes fighting in the streets for it.

Now, in some of the camps Islamic militants are accused of not only trying to take control, but of sending recruits to fight in Iraq. In Ein el-Hilweh, for example, a group called Asbat al-Ansar has told reporters that's exactly what it's been doing.

Now, the camps and the people in them are in a strange limbo when it comes to law and order, even normal life. Palestinians have been denied citizenship in Lebanon for decades now, and they're barred by law from 70 different ways of making a living.

They can't get licenses to practice medicine, to be engineers, nothing like that. The Lebanese government doesn't really provide services to them either. And as we have been reporting, by agreement with the Palestinians, the Lebanese army doesn't go into the camps.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLAYTON SWISHER, MIDDLE EAST INST.: It's very much like the bar scene from "Star Wars," minus the alcohol and the good times. This is place where internationally wanted, most wanted terrorists and criminals can go, because you have a decentralized -- I'm sorry, a weak centralized government in Lebanon, and you have complete lawlessness within the camps themselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANN: Now, the backdrop for all of this is that Palestinians are not popular in Lebanon. They're blamed for the country's civil war, they're blamed for the Israeli invasions.

The Lebanese government says it doesn't want the Palestinians to put down roots. It doesn't want them to own houses or have jobs. It wants them to be able to go home, and then once they're able, it wants them to go. The fighting we're seeing now will only make the Lebanese even more eager to see the back of the Palestinians.

GORANI: Now, the question is, Fatah al-Islam, which we see in that refugee camp, doesn't have the backing or the support of other Palestinian factions. Why is that?

MANN: Well, we keep hearing that over and over, they're not very popular. There are a lot of reasons. One of them is it's not clear they're Palestinians.

GORANI: Right.

MANN: They are so mysterious. We know the leader is a Palestinian, but there are people of other nationalities who aren't clearly refugees fighting alongside it.

The other thing is, if we look at the live pictures, they're not fighting for a state, they're not fighting Israel. They're fighting against the Lebanese...

GORANI: Right.

MANN: ... in the -- with a larger jihadist goal. They want to make the Palestinian people more devoutly Muslim. They want to make them more pious. They want...

(CROSSTALK)

GORANI: This is an extremist movement, not necessarily a nationalist movement at all in the way Palestinian factions are.

MANN: The smoke you're seeing and the bullets you're hearing, that's not been a Palestinian state. And the Palestinians know that as they watch this violence along with us.

GORANI: All right. Thanks very much. Jonathan Mann with some "Insight".

To all of our viewers, stay with us here on YOUR WORLD TODAY. A lot more on our breaking news out of Lebanon after this.

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CLANCY: Welcome back, everyone. This is YOUR WORLD TODAY. We're seen in more than 200 countries around the globe, including this hour the United States.

This is YOUR WORLD TODAY. I'm Jim Clancy.

GORANI: I'm Hala Gorani. One top story this hour, Lebanese troops battling Islamic militants inside a Palestinian refugee camp for a second straight day. It is the heaviest internal fighting in Lebanon since the end of the civil war.

CLANCY: The government is reporting that its troops are not randomly shooting into the camp near Tripoli. They say they're trying to hit some specific al Qaeda-linked militants inside the camp, but observers there say that the mortars are just flying into that refugee camp. Very densely populated. A lot of fears about what are going to be the civilian casualties. And right now it is impossible to get any numbers.

GORANI: Right. The camp is closed. It's difficult even for medical personnel to get in, hospitals nonexistent in the camp. Dozens of soldiers, militants and civilians were killed Sunday alone. Earlier we spoke with a journalist at the scene.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NICHOLAS BLANFORD, JOURNALIST: I've been here most of the day, and we've had intermittent gunfire since the morning. You'd have five minutes of calm, then somebody would start up with a machine gun, then the other side would reciprocate, and then you'd have heavy fighting for five minutes, and then it would settle down again. An hour and a half ago the fighting has picked up and it really hasn't stopped since then. So just behind me, I'm in a Lebanese army position, and just behind me, I've got Lebanese army units, who are firing mortars into the camp. And by going up the hill slightly where from where I am, you can look into the camp. I think you've got TV pictures of this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

BLANFORD: And the mortar rounds are striking serious targets inside the camp, presumably where the Fatah al-Islam militants are firing from. Now the Fatah al-Islam militants also firing back as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GORANI: Well this conflict in Lebanon brings to light many, many conflicts, longstanding tensions between the Lebanese and the Palestinians. That's one of them. Earlier I spoke with Middle East analyst Fawaz Gerges about who is behind the militant group of a few hundred men there in the camp that is at the center of this conflict.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FAWAZ GERGES, MIDDLE EAST ANALYST: Well, those are basically -- the subscribe to a militant Islamists ideology. They are -- they oppose even the secular Palestinian factions, who basically are pro- Palestinian Authority. They believe that Islam is the solution. They believe that the establishment of Islamic state represents the most effective means to liberate Palestine. They believe that the Lebanese government, the Palestinian Authority, and other Arab governments are basically un-Islamic and they act against the interests of Islam and a Palestinian interest as well.

GORANI: But let me ask you this, these are very determined fighters. They may be a small number, a couple of hundred, maybe 300. Who is behind them? And whose best interest is it to cause this kind of chaos?

GERGES: You're absolutely correct. They are very determined. I mean, the battle has been extremely fierce. Look at the number of casualties. More than 22 Lebanese soldiers killed. Dozens of Palestinian fighters and militants killed, including civilians.

Hala, in Tripoli, they fought a battle to the end. They never surrendered. Each one of them was killed in a fierce battle against the Lebanese army. What we need to understand, I mean, I think the ideology itself, the ideology is based on the idea that martyrdom basically is the way to go; the way to go to Heaven is through martyrdom. And they also realize that surrender will basically take them not only to Lebanese prisons, but basically means the end of their movement.

GORANI: But some in Lebanon, you have the government, the -- Saad Hariri, the government of Fouad Siniora, many in the press pointing the finger at Syria. Does this -- I mean, when you describe this group, it doesn't sound too much like something the Syrian government would to support. So would Syria -- would it be in its best interest for Syria to empower a Sunni extremist jihadist mini-army in Lebanon?

GERGES: I think you're asking a very critical and very pivotal question, because some Lebanese officials, as you said, pointed the finger at Syria, because as you know, Hala, there is a crisis pitting the Lebanese government against Syria because of the international court to try the assassins of the late Prime Minister al-Hariri.

But I would argue that the presence of Fatah al-Islam and other militant Islamists goes beyond Syria. You might say, there might be some tactical collaboration between the Syrian security forces and Fatah Islam members. That is the militants. But I would argue that long before the crisis between the Lebanese government and the Syrian government, militant Islamists have existed in Palestinian camps, not just in Nahr al-Bared, that is in North Lebanon, the Palestinian camp, but also in Ayin Nahawa (ph), one of the most important Palestinian camps in Southern Lebanon.

GORANI: And these camps I was going to say are closed, I mean, have been traditionally closed to the Lebanese army and authority. They've lived on their own in an insular fashion, and you've visited those camps. What is it like there?

GERGES: You know, Hala, again, you're really raising another important question. Those are -- those Palestinian refugee camps, I mean, you just -- you can never imagine the level of poverty and deprivation, some of the most, I mean, depressing scenes, one of the most -- some of the most highly, densely populated areas. There is poverty. There is deprivation. There is alienation. I mean, you can imagine being a Palestinian refugee either in the south or north, you are surround by the Lebanese armies. You have no right to employment. You have no right to education. You live in a huge prison, life inside the -- the camps, Hala, is really hellish. Think of hell, it is really as close as hell. No wonder why the ideology of al Qaeda is migrating, not only into Palestinian refugee camps, but also into the poverty belts of Arab cities, including Tripoli. Tripoli is in north Lebanon. In this particular sense, al Qaeda represents a form of empowerment, a form of empowerment to some of the most poorest elements in Arab society and Palestinian refugee camps as well.

GORANI: And will it extend outside the camp? Do the Lebanese have any influence as to whether or not this is going to extend outside the camp? We saw a bombing in a Christian neighborhood of Beirut, some called that a warning shot, that this was going to happen again.

GERGES: There's a real fear that basically the fight between the Lebanese army and Palestinian fighters in northern Lebanon may escalate and spread into other areas. And as you said, the bombing yesterday in the Christian-dominated areas in Beirut is an indication. Not only there is a real danger, but the crisis may escalate. But in fact the fighting between the Lebanese army and Palestinian militants may overburden an already-fragile political system in Lebanon. As you know, Hala, there is a major internal crisis between the Lebanese government and the opposition led by Hezbollah. There is also an intense crisis between the Lebanese government and the Syrian governments. All those fault lines, not only could escalate, but in fact would rack the already fragile political system. This is a real, real threat. It tells you about the gravity of the crisis facing the Lebanese government and the Lebanese people today.

GORANI: Alright. Putting it in perspective for us there, my conversation earlier with Middle East Analyst Fawas Gerges. Jim?

CLANCY: Alright. We want to take you back and show you a live picture coming out of the Nahr al Bared refugee camp, some seven miles or 13 kilometers north of the second largest city in Lebanon, Tripoli. This, only a few miles from the Syrian border. Our viewers in the U.S. and elsewhere all around the globe this hour. A dramatic story unfolding with important implications, not only for Lebanon, but beyond. Certainly for the war on terror an al Qaeda-linked group there, holed up inside that crowded refugee camp, Nahr al Bared, or cold river, fighting against Lebanese army forces. This is a battle that has raged now for two days since security forces went into that camp, trying to search some homes, after a bank robbery. They were searching for evidence and they -- what they uncovered was a huge cache of arms, then gun battles and fighting, ambushes broke out across north Lebanon in and around the city of Tripoli. We continue to follow the situation. Leena Saidi, a journalist, is there on the scene. She joins us now on the line. Leena, is the battle showing any signs of easing as dusk approaches?

LEENA SAIDI, JOURNALIST: No, the battle is still going on. There was supposed to be a lull this afternoon, a humanitarian lull for a couple of hours. But it last no longer than a half hour. And the militants formed a (INAUDIBLE) group, attacked the army yet again.

CLANCY: Important question, is the shelling, does it appear to be well directed against these militants, or does it appear to be indiscriminate right now?

SAIDI: Well, you know, it's very difficult to describe. The camp itself, as you said, is overcrowded. There are around 40,000 people living there and in very tight conditions. Now, the army has assured that they have targets they are bombing, but any bombing into such a crowded area will no doubt cause civilian casualties. The people in the camp have been without water. They don't have any bread. They're scared.

CLANCY: Is there any sign that people are fleeing that refugee camp?

SAIDI: The people are not -- cannot leave the refugee camp. There is no way out. There's no humanitarian corridor. The Red Cross has not been able to get in. There's no accurate estimations on casualties. We've heard figures like 30 dead, 19 dead. But until the Red Cross are able to get in, until they're able to bring out the bodies and the injured, we won't have a good perspective on that.

CLANCY: Fatah al Islam, the militant group itself, its leader said to have ties to al Zarqawi or does have ties with him, aspires to be an offshoot of al Qaeda, how much are the Palestinians aware of his group? How much support does it have?

SAIDI: Well, the group itself does not really have very much support within the camp. The Palestinians, other Palestinian factions, in this camp and other camps around the country have stood behind the army in what they are doing. However, having said that, what's happening now and with the civilian casualties, this is going to become an issue. We didn't expect this militant group to have much support on the street. But yesterday they were able to put up a very good battle against the army, causing over 20 people to be killed.

CLANCY: Now we're hearing more gunfire where you are. What is your location? Are you looking at essentially the same scene we are, which that huge plume of smoke rising up over the camp?

SAIDI: No, I'm actually outside Tripoli now. Having spent most of the time there. But it's been the same throughout the day. There has been gunfire coming from the camp, automatic gunfire. There has also been rockets from the army going into the camp. There are some who are beginning to wonder whether the factions within the camp are fighting each other. This would be a serious escalation.

CLANCY: Right. Leena Saidi, a journalist there in Tripoli, who has been all day at the Nahr al Bared refugee camps, many hours outside the camp, looking on at scene you're looking at right now. The smoke-smeared sky over northern Lebanon, ominous black clouds, really as people try to analyze what all of this will mean. It is pretty clear this al Qaeda-linked group based itself inside what has been called one of the islands of despair for the Palestinians, this refugee camp where normally police security forces, certainly the Lebanese army, does not go but the Lebanese army indeed has gone there. It went there in pursuit of what it perceived as common criminals associated with this group. A group long blamed for bombings. The Lebanese authorities have said this group has been involved in several bombings and they suspected of more. Many of them, many Lebanese, also suspect the group of having direct ties to Syria. But that is denied by Syria. And the evidence comes in the form of confessions that came from some of the members of the group. Not all believe to be Palestinians in the group, either. The Palestinian camps, thought to be the best place for recruiting for this al Qaeda offshoot. The Lebanese army says it won't back down. It's going to keep up the pressure until that group is out of operation. But in the meantime, thousands and thousands of civilians are caught in the crossfire. We're going to continue our live coverage right after this.

KYRA PHILLIPS, ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Kyra Phillips live from the CNN center here in Atlanta, Georgia, breaking news right now. We're just getting word that this plane, preparing to make an emergency landing in Tampa, Florida, less than two minutes, I'm being told, possibly a problem with the landing gear. Miles O'Brien, obviously, a pilot himself, joining us on the phone out of his office in New York. Miles, have you been listening to the scanners? Do you know what the problem is with the small plane?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I do, Kyra. If you take a look as you look at shot as it come in there, you'll see that the nose reel is not fully retracted and down. It appears he is about to land, he's on final approach. What he's been doing, apparently a flight instructor with a student, and they are on their way down. Let's listen to the helicopter reporter there for a second and see what he has to say.

UNIDENTIFIED HELICOPTER REPORTER: You can see the nose gear is stuck back in a 45 degree angle, that's the problem, it did not lock into place. He's coming up on the end of the runway.

O'BRIEN: He'll hold it as long as he can, Kyra. Now he's cutting off the fuel, cutting off the electricity in the airplane. Stopped the propellers from spinning, holding it as long as he can. Now down it goes.

PHILLIPS: Miles, you can see the nose gear, it's not locked into place. It's about, what, 40 degrees in? And there it goes, and it's down. O'BRIEN: And down they are. Yes, exactly. It just didn't fully deploy. He obviously went through the emergency checklist for getting that nose gear to deploy properly in the down and lock position. You get a little green light in the cockpit when that happens, when you don't get the green light, you know you've got trouble. He flew around for quite a while, burning off fuel, going through the emergency procedures. Trying to hand crank that thing down. You will see they will try to get out of that airplane as quickly as they can now.

PHILLIPS: Now, Miles, you said this is a student and its instructor. I have got to tell you what, you can't pay for instructions this good, talk about having to have a firsthand experience on an emergency landing.

O'BRIEN: Well, these are not the kind of -- it's not the kind of instruction you hope to do. You prefer to do this kind of thing in a simulator. I believe there is a third person on board as well.

PHILLIPS: Oh, a dog.

O'BRIEN: Is it a dog? Okay, there you go.

PHILLIPS: You know, I always bring my dog along, too, when I go for flight lessons, Miles, I don't know about you.

O'BRIEN: Very interesting. It's a flying dog. It's Snoopy, I don't know. In any case, the dog is wagging his tail and I think this sums up this story. Nice job holding off that nose wheel as long as possible. You want to bleed off as much speed before you start grinding some aluminum on that pavement there. But everything went well there, as you can see, both men are doing fine. The instructor and the student, and of course the dog which reminds me, dog is my co- pilot, right?

PHILLIPS: That's right, exactly. We are going to take one more look at the landing, since this is good news and we can have some fun and joke about this. Another casual day of flight training, here. These live pictures coming to us from Bay News 9 out of Florida.

A small plane was preparing to make an emergency landing in Tampa, Florida, and Miles and I were watching it as it came in. This is the take you can see that the nose gear didn't fully lock in front, 40, 45 degrees in. As Miles said, this is textbook. This is how they train to do it, right, Miles?

O'BRIEN: Yes, it's interesting, what you see there is he holds it off, holds it it off, for as long as he can. Probably would have liked to have the propellers not spinning at all by the time the nose went down but you know, we're now quibbling. Look how he keeps the tail from hitting on the back side and waits until the last possible moment before, boom, down it goes. It becomes an issue for the insurance agent and not for the paramedics, which is what you want.

PHILLIPS: Miles O'Brien, thank you so much. We'll get back now to CNN-I, breaking news in progress. We'll see you here eight minutes live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRENT SADLER, BEIRUT BUREAU CHIEF: ... a Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon. Their leader was sentenced to death in Jordan for the murder of a U.S. diplomat five years ago. Now, on the run, the Lebanese government says his group, Fatah al Islam, is behind recent terror attacks in Lebanon. But incredibly, no law enforcement agency can touch these fanatics. Because for decades, the Lebanese government has been powerless to enter any of Lebanon's 12 armed refugees camps.

KHALIL MAKKAWI, LEBANESE PALESTINIAN DIAK: The situation speaks for itself. Those camps have become fertile ground for the fundamentalists, the extremists ...

SADLER: Khalil Makkawi heads a new Lebanese government committee, trying to improve shocking living conditions in squalid refugee camps to counter the influence of extremists who can easily find recruits among the country's 400,000 refugees.

MAKKAWI: This is subhuman. The conditions that these people are living, is really subhuman.

SADLER: It is only Makkawi's second visit to the Sabra Chailla camp outside Beirut. Where he meets Farhat Sallm Farhat (ph), the slums have been home to Farhat all his adult life. His cramped home lost main's water 25 years ago and is hit by daily power cuts.

FARHAT SALLM FARHAT, SABRA CHAILLA CAMP RESIDENT: They cut from seven to ten.

SADLER: Every day?

FARHAT: Every day, every day.

SADLER: Generations of Palestinians have grown up inside these camps and the bigger their families get, the more they try to create space by building higher building, building closer together, making living conditions intolerable and very dangerous.

FARHAT: God forbid if there is a slight earthquake in this part of Beirut, the whole thing will crumble down.

SADLER: Are you happy living here?

FARHAT: No, nobody happy living in this camp. The big happy for us, if we can go back to our land.

SADLER: Farhat's land is what used to be Palestine. Do you think you will ever go back home to Palestine?

FARHAT: If you can take me now to Palestine, I go with you.

SADLER: But there is no hope that Farhat or any other Palestinians will leave their camps existing for almost 60 years, any time soon.

MAKKAWI: Unless you find a solution, a just solution to the Palestinian problem, there can nobody peace in the Middle East.

SADLER: And, perhaps no end to the growing appeal of militant fundamentalism inside refugee camps which are immune from the law.

Brent Sadler, CNN, Beirut.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CLANCY: Alright, Hala, let's check some of the other stories making headlines now. An Israeli air strike in Gaza, killing four militants earlier, eight people including a number of civilians were killed in an overnight attack at the house of a Hamas lawmaker. Israel stepping up attacks in Gaza amid a barrage of rocket fire from Gaza, in the past week.

GORANI: Well, the U.S. Senate is -- I believe we're looking at this story now, in other headlines we're covering outside Lebanon, the U.S. Senate is set to begin on a sweeping immigration overhaul. President Bush, last week, won support from key senators for a bill to legalize as many as 12 undocumented workers in the United States.

CLANCY: We've been looking at dramatic, and maybe we can bring those pictures back, Hala, those dramatic pictures coming out of Lebanon. Why are we covering this story in such depth? I think for our U.S. viewers and anybody around the world, we've got to be concerned about the Lebanese government. This group, al Qaeda-linked, perhaps carrying out its bank robbery, the other operations that it's accused of precisely because it sees the Lebanese government as weak and vulnerable.

GORANI: And you know, for the last few years we've been hearing reports about these al Qaeda-influenced groups taking root, setting down roots in these Palestinian refugee camps, recruiting members, not all of them Palestinian as we have been mentioning. Some coming from outside with a Jihadist agenda to strike at western or perceived western targets.

CLANCY: That has to be our report for this hour. I'm Jim Clancy.

GORANI: I'm Hala Gorani. This is YOUR WORLD TODAY. Stay with CNN. A lot more on this developing story and the other news headlines. Stay with us.

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