Lebanese terror group says head may be dead
Shaker al-Absi, head of al-Qaeda-linked Fatah al-Islam group operating from Palestinian refugee camp was probably killed by local security forces in Syria in 2007, group's web statement says
The leader of an al-Qaeda-linked Lebanese group has probably been killed in Syria, according to a statement purportedly posted by the faction on an Islamic militant website Tuesday.
Shaker al-Absi went on the run last year after his group, Fatah al-Islam, battled the Lebanese army for weeks inside a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon. The statement attributed to Fatah al-Islam said al-Absi fled Lebanon in 2007 and went to Syria.
It claimed he was later ambushed by Syrian security forces in Jermana, a small town south of Damascus. Al-Absi might have been detained, but most likely was killed, the statement said, without providing further details.
"We don't know his fate, but we believe he probably was martyred, but we don't have solid evidence," said the statement, which could not be independently verified.
There was no immediate comment from Syrian authorities about the statement posted on a website commonly used by Islamic terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda. Syria's government recently blamed Fatah al-Islam for a car bombing in the Syrian capital, Damascus, that killed 17 people in September.
The more than three-month siege in Lebanon, at the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp, ended in September 2007. Lebanon's government said about 220 gunmen and 168 soldiers were killed, while Palestinian officials put the Palestinian civilian death toll at 47.
Lebanese officials say Fatah al-Islam, which had set up a base at Nahr el-Bared in late 2006, is made up of Muslim extremists of various nationalities.
They say al-Absi is a Palestinian linked to the late leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He was sentenced to death in absentia in Jordan for his involvement in the 2002 murder of US diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman.
