WASHINGTON – Residents of the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, Ain el-Hilweh, are terrified they will be the next victism of ISIS after the slaughter at the Yarmouk Palestinian camp in Damascus, Syria, near the presidential palace of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
Sources tell WND the Lebanese camp may be attacked at almost any time by ISIS.
Syrian government forces are locked in a brutal battle with ISIS fighters who have taken over some 90 percent of the camp, which at one time housed some 160,000 refugees but whose numbers have dwindled to only 18,000 residents.
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A source from the Palestinian Authority has concluded that military action is the only solution for Yarmouk, since any notion of "dialogue with the Islamists is unrealistic."
Read the full report at Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
Now, fears are rising that the fate that Yarmouk met will be replicated in Lebanon at the Ain-el-Hilweh Palestinian camp located at Saida, or Sidon, 27 miles south of the capital, Beirut.
Ain el-Hilweh, the largest Palestinian camp in Lebanon, houses more than 120,000 refugees under the auspices of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, and is regarded as a bubbling caldron of Sunni jihadist unrest.
It is considered home to the leadership in Lebanon for ISIS, the al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra Front and the Abdullah Azzam Brigade, named after a Sunni Islamist militant who later joined with Osama bin Laden to form al-Qaida.
As WND has reported, the ISIS "emir" for Lebanon has been identified by various sources as Ahmed al-Assir, a Palestinian who has resided at Ain el-Hilweh and at other camps in the country’s Bekaa Valley.
Many residents of the refugee camps and analysts in Lebanon see the carnage at Yarmouk also happening at Ain el-Hilweh.
"Fears are mounting in Lebanon that violent and unpredictable extremist Islamist jihadists, including Da’ish (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra will seek to set up bases in Palestinian camps," Franklin Lamb, an international lawyer based in Beirut told WND in an email.
"Islamists have now moved into seven of the 12 camps with the highest level of organization being in Ain el-Hilweh, the largest refugee camp."
Franklin points out that in addition to the most prominent jihadist groups of ISIS and Nusra, there are at least a dozen secret groups and unknown "furtive cells operating even more clandestinely."
He said that the war in neighboring Syria has transformed parts of Ain el-Hilweh into a "safe haven" for jihadists traveling to fight there and training in districts where even the new joint Palestinian Security Force set up by the Ramallah-based Palestine Authority will not venture.
He said that jihadists are arriving at the camp daily.
Read the full report at Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.