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Fatah al-Islam: shadowy Al-Qaeda inspired group
Fatah al-Islam, whose militants were locked in deadly gunbattles with Lebanese forces on Sunday, is a shadowy extremist group accused of links to the Al-Qaeda network.
The radical splinter group has its stronghold near the port city of Tripoli in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared camp, which is home to about 22,000 people.
The Lebanese ruling bloc has accused Fatah al-Islam, said to be ideologically inspired by the Al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, of working for the Syrian intelligence services. But Syria has denied any links with radical groups such as Fatah al-Islam, which is headed by Shaker Abssi, a Palestinian wanted by both Syria and Jordan.
The group was also accused of carrying out bus bombings in the mountainous area of Ain Alak north of Beirut in February that left three people dead. But Fatah al-Islam denied any involvement in the bombings, and also denied it was linked to Al-Qaeda.
It in turn accused the Beirut government of trying to pave the way for an offensive against the Palestinian camps in Lebanon, which house more than half of the country's nearly 400,000 refugees.
The radical splinter group has its stronghold near the port city of Tripoli in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared camp, which is home to about 22,000 people.
The Lebanese ruling bloc has accused Fatah al-Islam, said to be ideologically inspired by the Al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, of working for the Syrian intelligence services. But Syria has denied any links with radical groups such as Fatah al-Islam, which is headed by Shaker Abssi, a Palestinian wanted by both Syria and Jordan.
The group was also accused of carrying out bus bombings in the mountainous area of Ain Alak north of Beirut in February that left three people dead. But Fatah al-Islam denied any involvement in the bombings, and also denied it was linked to Al-Qaeda.
It in turn accused the Beirut government of trying to pave the way for an offensive against the Palestinian camps in Lebanon, which house more than half of the country's nearly 400,000 refugees.
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Following his release from jail in Syria Abssi was said to have lived in Damascus where Fatah-Intifada, the Palestinian group he belonged to before Fatah al-Islam was founded, is based.
That group also denies any link with Fatah al-Islam and calls Abssi "a renegade from the movement."
is now based in Nahr al-Bared, facing a new arrest warrant issued by the authorities in Damascus. Syrian Interior Minister Baasam Abdel Majid said in March that Fatah al-Islam was one of the groups linked to Al-Qaeda that was unmasked in August 2002 while planning to launch acts of terrorism in Syria. Abssi denied Majid's allegations in an interview with a Lebanese newspaper in the same month.
In 2004, a Jordanian military court sentenced Abssi to death in absentia for his alleged involvement in the murder of American USAID diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman in 2002, along with six others including Zarqawi. At the time, the charge sheet identified Abssi as a Palestinian nicknamed Abu Yussef, and said he lived in Syria.