Lebanon militants declare truce

A Palestinian man drives his motorbike in front of burning tires at the entrance of Bedawi Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon, which is adjacent to the besieged Nahr al-Bared camp yesterday

"We have announced through the media that we are ready to respect a ceasefire, starting at 1130 GMT on Tuesday, and we hope that the Lebanese army will accept our offer in order to help end the suffering of civilians in Nahr Al-Bared," spokesman Abu Sali Taha said.

However "if the bombardments of the army resume, we will be patient for a while but we will respond if they persist," he said.

A total of 65 people have been killed in three days of battles around the impoverished refugee camp and the nearby Mediterranean port city of Tripoli.

"We want to put an end to the ordeal of the civilians in the camp which is bombarded by the army in order to end a battle that we have not chosen and into which we have been dragged," he said.

A Lebanese army spokesman told AFP that "we are not ready to announce any agreements because since the start, the army has been respecting (the rules of) a ceasefire."

"Our soldiers are only returning fire," said the spokesman who did not wish to be identified.

"The force will continue to respond to the fire of armed elements deployed inside the camp where civilians reside and which we are trying to protect."

Meanwhile, Syria distanced itself on Tuesday from the Islamists staging a deadly showdown in Lebanon while warning that a planned international murder trial for an ex-Lebanese premier would only further destabilise its neighbour.

"We renounce Fatah al-Islam. Members of the group are wanted by the Syrian security services," Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said, according to the official news agency SANA.

"This group serves neither the Palestinian cause nor the interests of the Palestinian people," he added.

Lebanese officials have accused Fatah al-Islam, whose fighters in the Palestinian camp of Nahr al-Bared have been locked in fierce clashes with the army since Sunday, of working for Syrian intelligence to stir up trouble.

The group's Palestinian leader Shaker al-Abssi slipped in to Lebanon last year after serving three years in a Syrian jail and is the subject of another arrest warrant issued by Damascus.