NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon, May 21, 2007 (AFP) - Lebanese troops battled Islamist extremists around a flashpoint Palestinian refugee camp for a second straight day on Monday, after the fiercest fighting in the country in years left 40 people dead.

Troops exchanged artillery and machingune fire with fighters from the Fatah al-Islam group entrenched in Nahr Al-Bared camp near the northern coastal city of Tripoli, an AFP photographer at the scene said.

Police said the area had witnessed a relatively calm night after the ferocious day-long gunbattles between soldiers and Fatah al-Islam, which is accused of links to the Al-Qaeda network and Syrian intelligence services.

The fighting in Tripoli and the camp, a Fatah al-Islam stronghold, has raised deep concerns about the stability of multi-confessional Lebanon, which is in the grip of an acute political crisis.

The cabinet authorised the army to "take all necessary measures to restore order," after a meeting with security chiefs.

A 63-year-old woman was also killed and 10 people wounded in the Christian quarter of Ashrafie in Beirut on Sunday in what a Lebanese police officer said was a "terrorist act."

He said a 40 kilogram (88 pound) bomb was hidden in a car in a parking area next to a shopping centre. Several cars were destroyed in the blast, which blew out windows of nearby residential buildings and gouged out a huge crater at the entrance to the garage.

"It was a terrorist attack aimed at sowing fear among the population and destabilise security in Lebanon," the officer said on condition of anonymity.

On Sunday, Lebanese troops fought running battles with Fatah al-Islam militants throughout the day in Tripoli and the camp, staging a daylight assault on a building in the northern city where fighters were holed up.

The army said the fighting was triggered when the militants staged an attack on a military post outside Nahr al-Bared, home to about 22,000 refugees.

Twenty-three soldiers lost their lives in the deadliest fighting between security forces and Islamists since 2000, while 15 gunmen were reported killed, 10 of them in Tripoli.

A Lebanese civilian died after being caught in the crossfire when troops stormed the building in a residential neighbourhood of Lebanon's second largest city.

A Palestinian refugee was also killed when the Lebanese army bombarded Nahr al-Bared.

Lebanon sent in heavy troop reinforcements to contain the battles involving anti-tank rockets and cannons which erupted at dawn on Sunday in Tripoli and around Nazhr al-Bared.

"The blows dealt by Fatah al-Islam against the Lebanese army are a premeditated crime and a dangerous attempt to destabilise (Lebanon)," charged Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.

His Western-backed government has been paralysed for months by an acute political crisis.

Syria, the former power broker in Lebanon, announced it had closed two border posts into its smaller neighbour because of the violence.

Lebanese authorities have accused Fatah al-Islam, a splinter group said to be ideologically close to Osama bin Laden's network, of working for the Syrian intelligence services, which Damascus has denied.

Lebanese MP Mustafa Hashem said Damascus was seeking to stir trouble as the UN Security Council prepared to consider imposing an international court to try suspects in the 2005 murder of former premier Rafiq Hariri in which it has been implicated.

Fatah al-Islam has denied charges that it carried out bus bombings in a Christian area north of Beirut in February that left three people dead. It has also denied any links to Al-Qaeda.

The group accused the government of trying to pave the way for an offensive against the Palestinian camps in Lebanon, which house more than half of the country's nearly 400,000 refugees.

Fatah al-Islam is headed by Shaker Abssi, who is said to be linked to the former leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who was killed in a US raid in 2006.

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