LEBANESE special forces were poised last night to storm a Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon and seize the Al-Qaeda-linked militants holed up inside.

Heavily armed naval special forces troops distinguishable by their red berets were seen punching the air in delight as they moved out from a checkpoint on the highway south of Tripoli and headed towards Nahr al-Bared.

Their deployment suggested that a full-scale assault on the densely built-up camp, where 8,000 civilians remain trapped, could be imminent.

The crack troops, who number several hundred, receive training in the United States and Britain. The equivalent of Britain’s Special Boat Service (SBS), they are armed with American M4 and M16 assault rifles, as well as rocket-propelled grenade launch-ers and sniper rifles. The unit is also understood to have been supplied with night vision goggles from the United States.

Regular Lebanese troops sustained casualties yesterday in the most intense fighting of a two-week stand-off at Nahr al-Bared. Heavy artillery, tanks and a naval gun boat have pounded rooftops and bases held by militants from Fatah al-Islam.

Black smoke poured from buildings across the camp as troops and militants exchanged machinegun fire, while an army helicopter fired rockets at targets on a coastal boundary.

At least two soldiers died in overnight fighting and one more yesterday morning, bringing the total death toll among fighters and civilians to at least 106.

Fatah al-Islam, which includes many foreigners from the conflict in Iraq, said yesterday that it had lost 31 fighters.

“They may have destroyed the buildings of our base but we are still occupying it,” the group’s spokesman said by telephone. The militants are believed to have dug tunnels and bunkers under their bases in expectation of an artillery bombardment.

“We will never surrender and the Lebanese army knows they will be massacred if they enter here. If they do, we will call on our brothers across the country to rise up,” the spokesman said.

A military intelligence source insisted the army had not yet received the final order to attack and occupy the whole camp.

Exhausted-looking soldiers yesterday helped to evacuate an injured comrade who had been hit in the eye, apparently by a Fatah al-Islam sniper.

Mazen Fakih, head of the civil defence unit that has been bringing out injured soldiers, said that he had recovered the body of a militant with his hand still on the pin of a grenade strapped to his body.

Another injured militant had been picked up last week and handed to Lebanese intelligence.

“He had three gunshot wounds to his leg but didn’t appear in any pain. They must be on drugs or something,” he said.

Nineteen Lebanese and one Syrian member of Fatah al-Islam were charged last week with terrorism, a crime that carries the death penalty in Lebanon.

Fatah al-Islam responded to yesterday’s onslaught with dozens of rocket attacks on the surrounding area. Yesterday morning a rocket fired from a rooftop inside the camp narrowly missed a Lebanese naval patrol boat.

Dr Yussef al-Assad, of the Pal-estine Red Crescent (PRC), the only emergency service that has been bringing out civilians from the camp, said it had received reports that about 100 civilians had been trapped under rubble in an underground bunker after their building was hit.

Since the heavy bombardment began on Friday, the PRC has been unable to gain access to the camp. Aid agencies have also found it impossible to deliver water and food.

“The army has the guts and the morale to do this but lacks specialist training,” said Timor Goksel, a long-time adviser to the United Nations forces in Lebanon who has worked with the Lebanese army.

With Al-Qaeda urging other militant groups in Palestinian refugee camps to rise up against the army, some analysts are predicting further chaos.

“The more the government kills and imprisons them, the more likely it is that Al-Qaeda-linked groups in Lebanon will retaliate,” said Amal Saad-Ghora-yeb, a visiting scholar at the Car-negie Middle East Centre in Beirut. “The government has let the genie out of the bottle and now has no way of getting it back in.”

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