Lebanese Army kills two Al Qaeda-linked militants

BEIRUT - Lebanese Army troops Saturday killed two militants loyal to Al Qaeda in eastern Lebanon, security sources said.

The two men were a part of Fatah al-Islam, a fundamentalist Palestinian group that follows the ideology of Al Qaeda, and that fought pitched battles with the Lebanese Army in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al Bared in 2007 in northern Lebanon.

“Abdul Rahman Awadh, one of the key leaders of Fatah al-Islam, was killed along with another militant known as Abu Bakr in an ambush by the Lebanese Army in the eastern Bekaa Valley,” a security source said.

Two years ago a Lebanese court charged Awadh in absentia of carrying out attacks in the northern city of Tripoli in 2008 that killed 21 people, including 13 Lebanese soldiers.

He was also believed to have been monitoring the movements of the United Nations peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon and the Lebanese Army and plotting attacks against the two forces.