DAR AL HARB / ISLAM - LEBANON: ANOTHER JIHADIST GROUP IDENTIFIES ITSELF

A new face of jihad vows attacks on U.S.

TRIPOLI, Lebanon: Deep in a violent and lawless slum just north of this coastal city, 12 men whose faces were shrouded by scarves drilled with Kalashnikovs.

In unison, they lunged in one direction, turned and lunged in another. "Allah-u akbar," the men shouted in praise to God as they fired their machine guns into a wall.

The men belong to a new militant Islamic organization called Fatah al Islam, whose leader, a fugitive Palestinian named Shakir al-Abssi, has set up operations in a refugee camp here where he trains fighters and spreads the ideology of Al Qaeda.

He has solid terrorist credentials. A former associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia who was killed last summer, Abssi was sentenced to death in absentia along with Zarqawi in the 2002 assassination of an American diplomat in Jordan, Laurence Foley. Just four months after arriving here from Syria, Abssi has a militia that intelligence officials estimate at 150 men and an arsenal of explosives, rockets and even an antiaircraft gun.

During a recent interview with The New York Times, Abssi displayed his makeshift training facility and his strident message that America needed to be punished for its presence in the Islamic world. "The only way to achieve our rights is by force," he said. "This is the way America deals with us. So when the Americans feel that their lives and their economy are threatened, they will know that they should leave."

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