The Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp seems to be on edge again following reports that a group of militant Islamist Palestinians and Syrians are being recruited to carry out bombings against military, security, diplomatic and partisan targets in Lebanon, security sources said.
The sources said senior Lebanese security officials have relayed to leading Palestinian groups in Lebanon “worrisome signals” about the security situation the camp, located on the outskirts of the southern city of Sidon, despite efforts made by various Palestinian factions to distance Ain al-Hilweh from the reverberations of the war in Syria.
According to the Lebanese officials, the bank of targets being pondered by terror cells include the Lebanese Army’s posts, buildings and administrative offices used by the military establishment, a number of clinics, in addition to military checkpoints in certain areas.
Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk’s recent statement in which he said that those who had plotted the Jan. 10 deadly twin suicide bombings in the Jabal Mohsen neighborhood in the northern city of Tripoli were hiding in Ain al-Hilweh probably constituted the first step toward putting the camp under further Lebanese security surveillance, the officials said.
They added that confessions by Bassam al-Naboush, one of three terror suspects arrested by the Lebanese Army last week, have revealed that a network of would-be suicide bombers was touring all Lebanese areas and was in close coordination with Shadi Mawlawi, one of the most-wanted Islamist fugitives.
Mawlawi is working to recruit some Islamists at the request of the commander of the Nusra Front Abu Malek al-Tali with the aim of targeting only military positions at this time, the officials said.
The Army has said that Naboush, and the other two terror suspects, Elie Tony al-Warraq and Mohannad Ali Abdel-Kader, were plotting a series of terrorist attacks against “Army locations and residential areas” following the Tripoli bombings. It said the three suspects were linked to Mawlawi and Osama Mansour, who, according to Machnouk, have taken shelter in Ain al-Hilweh since they fled Tripoli after the Army crushed Islamist militants in Tripoli in October.
The Daily Star has obtained a copy of a security report that revealed that “the Ain al-Hilweh camp has become a gathering place to a number of Islamist cells that include Palestinians from inside the camp and people of various nationalities who have been arriving in the camp since the outbreak of the Syrian crisis [in 2011].”
Haitham Mahmoud Mustafa, codenamed “Haitham Shaabi,” the commander of militant Jund al-Sham group who maintains contacts with the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Abdullah Azzam Brigades, is working to recruit Syrian refugees in Shiite areas in Lebanon to carry out security missions, according to the report.
He is also recruiting cells from Ain al-Hilweh to send them to jihad in Syria, the report said.
It added that security agencies had monitored suspicious movements by a number of Islamist militants in Bustan al-Wadi area in Ain al-Hilweh, where meetings were held and arms were clandestinely distributed to cells in the camp by officials who were reported to be activists within Al-Qaeda-linked Fatah al-Islam group.
A Palestinian, identified only as Khaldoun T., codenamed “Abu Yasser,” keeps contacts with takfiri groups outside the Ain al-Hilweh camp which provide arms to Fatah al-Islam cells, the report said.
It warned of suspicious movements by Jund al-Sham and Fatah al-Islam groups in Ain al-Hilweh, adding that a senior Nusra Front official, Sheikh Osama Chehabi, is personally supervising the training of the Front’s group in the camp in coordination with Saleh Mustafa, a Syrian.
This security information was discussed last week during a meeting held at the Zgheib Army Barrack in Sidon between Brig. Gen. Ali Shahrour, the chief of the Army intelligence in the south, and senior Palestinian officials based in Ain al-Hilweh.
According to sources familiar with the meeting, Shahrour spoke about worrisome signals in Ain al-Hilweh as manifested in the rising number of the Nusra Front’s flags hoisted in the camp, along with armed protests by some masked gunmen against last week’s security operation that dismantled a terror operations room run by Islamist militants in Roumieh Prison, and the presence of dangerous wanted people who pose a threat to civil peace in Lebanon.
Shahrour stressed the need to take quick measures to prevent Ain al-Hilweh from turning into a den to export terrorism and strife, the sources said.
For their part, Maj. Gen. Subhi Abu Arab, the commander of the Palestinian National Security in Lebanon, and Fathi Abu al-Ardat, the secretary of the Fatah Movement, who attended the meeting said that the equation of “security by consent” is allowing some wanted Islamists to plot subversive acts from inside the camp, the sources added.
The two officials pointed out that the postponement of the Lebanese-Palestinian dialogue presented Ain al-Hilweh with dangerous possibilities which the Palestinian situation in Lebanon cannot bear, especially amid an increased talk that the camp has become a tool in the raging conflict in the region.
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