Mediators try to evacuate wounded from Lebanon siege camp

"Contacts continue with the Lebanese army and (Fatah al-Islam spokesman) Abu Salim Taha," Sheikh Mohamad Hajj, spokesman for the League of Palestine Clerics, told AFP.

"We have still not reached an agreement on how" the wounded extremists would be evacuated from the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared, Hajj said, without elaborating.

An army spokesman confirmed that mediation was taking place, without wishing to give more details on the number of wounded militants due to be evacuated.

The clerics had already succeeded in arranging for the wives and children -- 63 people -- of the remaining Fatah al-Islam militants to be evacuated last Friday.

Hajj said the Lebanese as well as Palestinian civilians with Lebanese travel documents who were evacuated on Friday had joined their families in the refugee camps of Ain al-Helweh in the south and Baddawi, near Nahr al-Bared.

He said Syrian or Palestinian evacuees with Syrian travel documents have already left for neighbouring Syria.

A small number of foreign evacuees with no travel documents were in army custody, Palestinian sources said.

An army spokesman said that information from those evacuated could help the military in its final showdown with the militants.

On Monday there was sporadic artillery fire on Nahr al-Bared, and the militants responded with sniper fire, an AFP correspondent said.

Two more soldiers were killed on Saturday, taking the army's death toll in the three-month confrontation to 148.

Nahr al-Bared was home to 31,000 Palestinian refugees when fighting broke out with the Islamists, who claim ideological ties to Al-Qaeda. Most residents of the camp fled shortly after fighting began.

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