NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon, July 10, 2007 (AFP) - Lebanese soldiers on Tuesday tightened the noose on Islamist militants holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp in the north by taking more buildings, an army spokesman told AFP.

"The soldiers, supported by heavy artillery and tank fire, took control of three strategic buildings on the southern edge of Nahr al-Bared where snipers had been hiding," he said.

The army, which ousted the Fatah al-Islam fighters from the northern part of the camp last month, had "tightened the noose even further" on the militants it has besieged since May 20.

"Soldiers also exchanged small arms fire with Islamists hiding in half-destroyed buildings," he added.

An AFP correspondent said troops had fired about 40 shells into Nahr al-Bared on Tuesday, and that several badly damaged buildings had collapsed under the onslaught.

Four hundred Palestinian civilians of the camp's original population of 31,000 are still inside Nahr al-Bared, Sultan Abul Aynayn, the Lebanon chief of the mainstream Palestinian faction Fatah, told AFP on Monday.

Humanitarian organisations have been unable to deliver supplies into the camp since June 20.

The fighting first erupted when Islamists launched a series of attacks on soldiers, killing 27 of them around the camp and in nearby Tripoli, the main city in northern Lebanon.

At least 173 people have been killed in the deadliest internal fighting to afflict Lebanon since the 1975-1990 civil war. Among the dead are 85 soldiers and at least 65 Islamists, according to a toll based on official figures kept by AFP.

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