NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon, July 3, 2007 (AFP) - Lebanese soldiers made small advances Tuesday in a refugee camp where they have been fighting Arab Islamist fighters for the past six weeks, the military said.

"There are movements on the ground. We are taking buildings and clearing some buildings" booby-trapped by militants of the Fatah al-Islam extremist group, an army spokesman told AFP.

Troops fired occasional bursts from automatic weapons at Islamist snipers in Nahr al-Bared camp, near the port city of Tripoli, along with a rare volley of shellfire.

As aid workers continued to seek access to trapped civilians, Palestinian factions have struggled to agree on the mandate of a proposed force to end the deadly showdown in the besieged camp.

The mainstream Palestinian Fatah faction aims to assemble a 300-strong force.

In the absence of reliable figures, hundreds of Nahr al-Bared's original population of 31,000 are believed to remain inside the camp. The vast majority took advantage of lulls in the fighting to flee.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has warned of the deteriorating humanitarian situation inside the camp, to which it has been denied access for almost two weeks because of the fighting.

According to a count compiled from official figures, the clashes have now claimed at least 170 lives, including 85 soldiers, in and around Nahr al-Bared. The toll does not include the corpses of fighters abandoned in the camp.

Lebanon on Monday deployed 300 internal security force (ISF) men on its northern border with Syria, ISF chief General Ashraf Rifi said.

"The army asked us to help strengthen the observation posts on the border between north Lebanon and Syria, stretching 100 kilometres (60 miles), and to prevent smuggling," he told AFP.

The United Nations said last week that foreign security experts should be deployed to help Beirut stop arms smuggling from Syria. Damascus has closed all but its main border crossing with Lebanon, citing the Nahr al-Bared battle.

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