Fourteen people, including two soldiers, have died on a day of heavy fighting between the Lebanese army and al-Qaeda-inspired militants in a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon.

Advancing under the cover of the heaviest shelling in 13 days of fighting, soldiers and armoured vehicles moved into the Nahr el-Bared camp in what officials described as the start of a final assault to secure the camp from the rogue extremists.

Speaking from beside a Lebanese army position close to the coastal camp, just to the north of Tripoli, Nick Blanford, Lebanon Correspondent of The Times, said: “This is the final offensive. Soldiers here are saying this should be over tomorrow.”

Blanford said that the army barrage started at dawn and that the militants had responded with gun and occasional mortar fire. He said it was impossible to tell from the level of fire whether troops had yet entered the camp en masse, but added: “It looks like [the army] are softening the place up before moving the troops in.”

According to APTN television at the scene, around 50 armoured personnel carriers, battle tanks and military vehicles from elite units massed at the northern edge of the camp and drove to forward positions.

There was no official confirmation that the units were making a final assault to take the camp – in militant control since last year – but a significant decrease in the shelling, accompanied by a rise in machine gun and automatic rifle fire, suggested the troops were already engaging the fighters.

Security sources said the army was responding to fire from within the camp and did not intend to storm the crowded centre, where thousands of Palestinian civilians live in grim, often unsanitary conditions.

A military spokesman said that the army had destroyed several structures overlooking its positions on the camp’s edge in the early stages of the attack.“Snipers have been using these outposts to fire at our soldiers,” he said.

Meanwhile, Lebanese television reported that troops were attempting to seize the offices of Fatah Islam, the Sunni militia in control of the dense settlement.

The shelling ignited fires that spewed black smoke from the winding streets where the militants have been holed up. The camp is ringed by soldiers, artillery and tanks. Some 34,000 of its 40,000 residents are thought to have fled, leaving the elderly and vulnerable exposed in the crossfire.

Today's 14 reported deaths bring the death toll of the 13-day siege to 37 soldiers, around 29 militants and at least 20 civilians. It was not known whether the 12 people who died within the camp were civilians or militants. The conflict is Lebanon’s worst internal violence since the civil war ended in 1990.

Earlier this week, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah faction warned Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fouad Siniora that “any decision to let the army enter the camp would mean sacrificing the army, Lebanon and the Palestinian people.”

The Fatah al-Islam movement split from the secular Fatah al-Intifada last year under the leadership of Shakir al-Abssi, 49, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin and disciple of Osama bin Laden. Its mission statement calls on Muslims to fight Jews and “all those who support them from the Zionist Crusaders of the West.”

Fatah al-Islam operatives infiltrated Nahr al-Bared last year. Around 250 fighters – most non-Palestinians including Saudis, Syrians, Yemenis and Algerians – set up their headquarters in the camp and amassed powerful weaponry including heavy machineguns and rocket propelled grenades. The current stand-off was sparked on May 19 when the militants killed Lebanese soldiers guarding the camp and seized their positions after police raided a flat housing Fatah al-Islam fighters in central Tripoli.

Under a 1969 Arab accord, Lebanon’s army may not enter the country’s Palestinian refugee camps.

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