Squalid living conditions in Lebanon's refugee camps are partly to blame for the rise of the Islamic extremist group Fatah al-Islam, says Lebanon's former ambassador to the United Nations.Lebanese forces battled members of an Islamic militant group in a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli, sending huge plumes of black smoke to the sky as the powerful sounds of gunfire shook the region Monday. (Full story)
Khalil Makkawi, who now works to try to improve the conditions in those camps, said the poor living conditions have supplied Fatah al-Islam with a constant source of recruitment and support among Palestinians in Lebanon.
"The situation speaks for itself," Makkawi told CNN's Brent Sadler in a recent interview. "Those camps have become fertile ground for the fundamentalists, the extremists."
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