BEIRUT, Lebanon -- When Shaker Youssef al-Absi showed up at a Palestinian refugee camp last year and offered commandoes to fight the Israelis, fellow fighters received him with enthusiasm. They gave his 60 or so recruits weapons and military training.
Today, al-Absi and his men _ whose numbers have swelled to a few hundred, many from other Arab countries _ are pariahs in Palestinian camps, fighting a different war far from the Israeli border against a different enemy: Lebanon's army.
About a year after their arrival, the deeply religious and reclusive men of al-Absi's breakaway group Fatah Islam are now at the heart of a three-week battle against the Lebanese army in the Nahr el-Bared camp in northern Lebanon.
"Our movement welcomed them because of their desire to attack the Zionists (Israel)," said Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, an official of pro-Syrian Fatah Uprising, which armed and trained al-Absi's men in eastern Lebanon close to the Syrian border. "But it seems they had other intentions, even before they joined us."
Recent interviews with Fatah Uprising and other officials shed new light on the rapid emergence of a radical Islamic force now locked in a bloody standoff with the Lebanese army. They also reveal the complex interaction of Palestinian and other groups in Lebanon _ all opposed to Israel but with differing ideologies _ that are creating huge challenges for the government here.
More than 120 people have been killed during the Lebanese army's grinding offensive to drive Fatah Islam militants out of the Nahr el-Bared settlement in the worst internal violence in Lebanon since the 1975-90 civil war.
On Saturday, artillery and tanks pounded militant positions in renewed heavy fighting.
The Lebanese government accuses Syria of backing the militant group at Nahr el-Bared to stir up trouble in Lebanon, which the government in Damascus long controlled until forced to leave in 2005. Syria denies the claim, saying it considers the group a dangerous terrorist organization.
When al-Absi first appeared in Lebanon, Palestinians there were anticipating an Israeli attack on their camps after the capture of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants in Gaza and other violence there, said Abu Mohammed and other Palestinians.
So al-Absi's offer of fighting Israel in case of attack was received with open arms by Fatah Uprising and its deputy leader, Abu Khaled al-Amleh, who was based in Damascus. Fatah Uprising itself broke from the mainstream Palestinian Fatah movement in the early 1980s.
Al-Absi, who is wanted in Jordan for involvement in a 2004 assassination of a U.S. diplomat there, spread out increasing numbers of recruits to several Palestinian camps _ about 120 in Beirut's Bourj el-Barajneh, 60 in Beddawi in the north and 150 in Nahr el-Bared.
Abu Mohammed and another Fatah Uprising official, Mahmoud Doulla, told The Associated Press that their leaders were so impressed with al-Absi's selfless dedication to the Palestinian cause that, at first, they ignored warning signs of other trouble.
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