Osbat al-Nour ( ar, عُصْبَة ٱلنُّور 'Band of Light') is an
armed Islamist group that professes allegiance to a
Salafist
The Salafi movement or Salafism () is a reform branch movement within Sunni Islam that originated during the nineteenth century. The name refers to advocacy of a return to the traditions of the "pious predecessors" (), the first three generati ...
interpretation of
Islam.
Ain al-Hilweh 2003
In May 2003 fighting broke out between members of Osbat al-Nour and
Fatah militia
A militia () is generally an army or some other fighting organization of non-professional soldiers, citizens of a country, or subjects of a state, who may perform military service during a time of need, as opposed to a professional force of r ...
members in the south
Lebanon
Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to Lebanon–Syria border, the north and east and Israel to Blue ...
Palestinian refugee camp
Camps are set up by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to accommodate Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA, who fled or were expelled during the 1948 Palestinian e ...
of
Ain al-Hilweh
Ain al-Hilweh ( ar, عين الحلوة, lit. meaning "sweet natural spring"), also spelled as Ayn al-Hilweh and Ein al-Hilweh, is the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. It had a population of over 70,000 Palestinian refugees but swell ...
as part of an ongoing series of battles for control of the Palestinian refugee camp.
A serious clash took place on 17 May, after the near-fatal shooting of Osbat al-Nour leader
Abdullah Shraidi,
in which one of Abdullah's bodyguards and a bystander were killed. The shooting occurred while they were returning from the funeral of
Ibrahim Shraidi, a family relative though a member of Fatah, who had been gunned down by an unknown assailant. About 200 Osbat al-Nour fundamentalist fighters attacked Fatah offices at Ain al-Hilweh. Eight people were killed (included six members of
Yasser Arafat
Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini (4 / 24 August 1929 – 11 November 2004), popularly known as Yasser Arafat ( , ; ar, محمد ياسر عبد الرحمن عبد الرؤوف عرفات القدوة الحسيني, Mu ...
's Fatah movement) and 25 wounded in the fighting. Schools in the Ain al-Hilweh camp were shut and most stores kept their shutters down at the height of the fighting, which provoked an exodus by hundreds of camp residents. Two months after the ambush Abdullah Shraidi died from wounds received during the attack.
Fatah agreed to a ceasefire after failing to defeat Osbat al-Nour in the camp.
Links with al-Qaeda
Osbat al-Nour is said to be an offshoot of the larger
Osbat al-Ansar
Osbat al-Ansar or Asbat an-Ansar (, "League of the Partisans") is a Sunni fundamentalist group established in the early 1990s, with a primary base of operations in the Palestinian camp of Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp near Sidon, which claims prof ...
, which is on the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
list of
terrorist groups
A number of national governments and two international organizations have created lists of organizations that they designate as terrorist. The following list of designated terrorist groups lists groups designated as terrorist by current and fo ...
because of its alleged links to
Osama Bin Laden's
al-Qaeda.
IsraPundit
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References
{{reflist
Islamist insurgent groups
Salafi Islamist groups
Jihadist groups