Blast near Fatah official home in Lebanon camp: police
A device exploded near the home of a Fatah official in the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidiyeh in south Lebanon early on Thursday, causing only minor damage, police said.
The blast in the camp near the port town of Tyre apparently targeted Hajj Faruq, an official of the mainstream party of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
An official of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, meanwhile, said portraits of the group”s Damascus-based leader Khaled Meshaal had been ripped off walls in the camp.
Other Hamas pictures, slogans and flags were destroyed in the refugee camps of Al-Maashouq in Tyre, Al-Jalil in the eastern town of Baalbek, and Burj al-Barajneh in Beirut”s southern suburbs, he added, declining to be named.
Fatah”s chief in Lebanon, Sultan Abul Aynayn, denied any involvement. "We have nothing to do with what happened in the camps," he said in a statement.
Hamas and Fatah have been at odds since the Islamists violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. The two factions are due to resume reconciliation talks in Cairo on February 22.
The incidents in Lebanon came a day after Meshaal said in Doha that the Palestine Liberation Organisation "in its current situation does not represent the Palestinian people," calling for an alternative.