Is Lebanon facing a 'new breed' of Al Qaeda?

The group is led by Shaker al-Absi, a veteran Palestinian guerrilla fighter who originally trained in the Syrian Air Force and allegedly fought with Mr. Zarqawi in Iraq. The Jordanian authorities sentenced Mr. Absi to death in absentia in 2004 for the killing of an American diplomat in Amman. At the time, he was serving a three year jail sentence in Syria, but Damascus refused to extradite Absi to Jordan. He was released last year and his arrival in Lebanon coincided with the issuance of another arrest warrant for him by the Syrian authorities.

Absi has said that Fatah al-Islam "wishes to fight no one but Israel" but has made veiled threats against the 13,000 UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon.

The Lebanese government has blamed deadly twin bus bombings and a string of bank robberies on the group.

Ghazi Aridi, the Lebanese information minister, described Fatah al-Islam as a "terrorist phenomenon that is alien to the values and nature of the Palestinian people."

Sheikh Mohammed Meri, a Palestinian cleric from Nahr al-Bared, said the militants were a "virus."

"Whoever is behind this group has put a virus in our hearts," he said, standing outside the camp entrance as fleeing refugees left in packed vehicles. "But our immunity is greater than this virus."

Still, although the Palestinian residents of Nahr al-Bared say they have little sympathy for the group, the heavy civilian casualty toll and seemingly indiscriminate shelling of the camp by the Lebanese Army is causing an uproar among Lebanon's Palestinian population.

The leaders of all the Palestinian factions have sided with the Lebanese government in tackling Fatah al-Islam, viewing the group as a threat to Palestinian stability. But Sultan Abul Aynayn, the head of the mainstream Fatah faction in Lebanon, has warned that if the shelling continues ,there will be "uprisings in all the camps in Lebanon."

Sahaar Baasiri, writing in Lebanon's An Nahar newspaper, said, "Everybody knows that Fatah al-Islam does not represent the Palestinian people, and Palestinian mainstream factions should not hesitate to hit the militant group, which if left unchallenged by other Palestinian groups will jeopardize the security of all Palestinian refugees in Lebanon."

Much like other Al Qaeda-inspired militants, the Fatah al-Islam fighters have strapped explosives and detonators to themselves and appear determined to keep fighting until the end.

Saad Ghorayeb, the analyst, warned that the environment in Lebanon and the region is conducive to the emergence of other groups that share Fatah al-Islam's militant ideology.

"If this group is wiped out, another will emerge," she says. "These small groups have the ability to breed and mutate, and are very difficult to completely crush."

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