Fatah al-Islam (Arabic: فتح الإسلام, meaning: Conquest of Islam) is a Sunni Islamist militant group established in November 2006 in a Palestinian refugee camp, located in Lebanon.

[17] From Libya, al-Abssi reportedly moved to Damascus, Syria, where he established close ties with Fatah al-Intifada's number two in command, Abu Khaled al-Omla.

[17] In 2004, al-Abssi was sentenced to death in absentia by a Jordanian military court for involvement in the assassination of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley, after Syrian authorities refused to extradite him for trial.

[17] In May 2006, al-Abssi and this small group engaged in armed clashes with Lebanese soldiers that led to the killing of one young Syrian wanted by Damascus for fighting in Iraq.

[17] The investigation unmasked the close coordination between al-Omla and al-Abssi that had been kept from the pro-Damascus Secretary General of Fatah al-Intifada, Abu Musa, and by extension, from the Syrian authorities.

[17] Al-Omla then reportedly ordered al-Abssi to leave the Western Beqaa, which is close to the borders with Syria, and head for refugee camps in northern Lebanon.

[17] In November 2006, the Palestinian security committee in the Beddawi refugee camp in Tripoli, in northern Lebanon, handed over two members of al-Abssi's group to Lebanese military intelligence.

[10] In March 2007, Seymour Hersh, investigative reporter for the magazine The New Yorker, suggested that the Lebanese government was giving support to Fatah al-Islam, in order to defeat Hezbollah.

[20] Additionally, Barry Rubin, Director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center, alleged that al-Abssi was in fact a Syrian operative engaged in destabilizing the government of Lebanon.

[21] In November 2008, Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a Washington journalist, questioned Hersh's credibility and links to known Syrian proteges in Lebanon, such as former information minister Michel Samaha.

[22] Other indications that Fatah al-Islam, and al-Abssi specifically, may have had Syrian support come from Samir Geagea, executive body chairman of the Lebanese Forces, who asked why: if anyone is found out to be a Muslim Brotherhood activist, he receives a death sentence, and if he is very lucky, he gets hard labor.

[citation needed] According to Reuters, Fatah al-Islam's primary goals are to institute Islamic law in Palestinian refugee camps and to target Israel.

"[28] In an interview on CNN International's "Your World Today," Seymour Hersh said that according to an agreement between the United States Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams, and Saudi National Security Adviser Prince Bandar bin Sultan, covert funding for the Sunni Fatah al-Islam would be provided by the Saudi regime to counterweight the influence of the Shia Hezbollah.

"[19] Hezbollah released a statement saying, "We feel that there is someone out there who wants to drag the [Lebanese] army to this confrontation and bloody struggle ... to serve well-known projects and aims," and it called for a political solution to the crisis.

[18] According to Ashraf Rifi, the Lebanese Internal Security Forces chief, the bank robbers were traced to an apartment in Tripoli which turned out to be an office for Fatah al-Islam.

[34] Robert Fisk reported that while some of the group that had robbed the bank were cornered in the apartment block, others had holed up in the Nahr el-Bared camp north of the city.

Security officials also reported that the gunmen had opened fire on roads leading out of the camp to Tripoli, and ambushed a military unit, killing two soldiers.

[36] In response, the Lebanese army brought in reinforcements and on 20 May began a steady barrage of artillery and heavy machine gun fire in an attempt to hit militant positions that Fatah al-Islam had occupied inside the Nahr al-Bared camp.

[citation needed] While the Lebanese army had been sending tank and mortar fire into the camp in pursuit of Fatah al-Islam, some 30,000 civilians were trapped inside, and conditions had rapidly worsened.

[citation needed] Palestinian civilians from the refugee camp were finally able to flee the fighting after Fatah al-Islam declared a unilateral truce on 22 May, and the exodus continued on 23 May.

[53] On 18 August 2010, the group stated its leader and a top commander were heading to Iraq to join insurgents there when Lebanese security troops killed them over the weekend, according to a U.S. terror-monitoring firm.

The Washington-based SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks militant postings on the Internet, said that a statement on jihadist forums from Fatah al-Islam confirmed the deaths of the two.

Awad, who had been hiding in Ain al-Hilweh for more than a year, opened fire at troops along with his comrade, Abu Bakr Abdullah, and the soldiers responded, killing the pair, the army said.

[57] The chief of its military wing (the Caliphate Brigades), Nidal al-Asha, was killed in Aleppo in July 2012, and the group's emir, Abdelaziz al-Kourakli (Abu Hussam al-Shami), died in an ambush on the Deraa–Damascus road in September 2012.