Lebanon bomb kills Fatah official

A bomb killed a senior official in the Palestinian Fatah faction and four other people in southern Lebanon on Monday, security sources said.

Kamal Medhat, deputy head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in Lebanon, was killed with his companions on a road near Mieh Mieh camp outside the southern city of Sidon.

The bomb, hidden under a manhole cover in the road, flipped one car off the road and badly damaged another. Television footage showed debris ablaze in a field.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned Medhat's killing as an act of terrorism. A Fatah spokesman in the West Bank said it was too early to speculate on who was behind the attack and that the Palestinian leadership would await the findings of investigations by the Lebanese security forces.

Medhat had been accompanying Lebanon PLO representative Abbas Zaki, who was not injured in the blast, on a visit to Mieh Mieh camp. Lebanon is home to 12 Palestinian refugee camps that house more than 200,000 registered refugees.

Osama Hamdan, representative of Hamas in Lebanon, said Medhat had played a role in helping to ease tensions among Palestinian groups. "It is not possible to speculate on who committed this crime," he told Hezbollah's al-Manar television.

Palestinian sources in Lebanon said Medhat had been involved in an internal power struggle within Fatah.

Tensions have been high in Mieh Mieh and the nearby Palestinian camp of Ain al-Hilweh, where Fatah and a range of Islamist factions compete for influence.

Two people, including a Fatah activist, were killed on Saturday in a gunbattle in Mieh Mieh camp. The clash was attributed to a family dispute.