Four Lebanese soldiers were killed as Lebanese troops on Wednesday battled militants inside a northern Palestinian refugee camp, a senior military official said. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorizes to talk to the media, said the army was making advances in the refugee camp that has been the scene of heavy clashes with the Fatah Islam Group's militants for the past two months. «The army is expanding its area of control and is closing in on remaining militants fighting in certain pockets of the Nahr el-Bared camp,» he told The Associated Press. The four soldiers were killed overnight, he said, raising to 107 the army's fatalities since fighting broke out nearly two months ago in the Palestinian camp near the northern port city of Tripoli. The official also said the military was in the «final stages of having full control» of the main road separating the new camp and the so-called «old camp» sections of Nahr el-Bared. The term old camp refers to densely populated neighborhoods where most of the Palestinian refugees lived and where most of remaining fighters were thought to be still barricaded. Meanwhile, Fatah Islam fighters fired five Katyusha rockets that landed in a village about seven kilometers (four miles) from the camp. Two more rockets landed near the main highway in the nearby town of Minyeh. No casualties were reported in either attack.
