Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp for displaced Palestinians in Lebanon is stinking and filthy - a breeding-ground for al-Qaeda inspired militancy, as Lynne O'Donnell found out.
Abdullah Shreidi lies in a filthy hospital bed, the buzzing of flies on the piles of rotting rubbish outside his window providing a backbeat for the agony that grips what's left of his broken body.
Until last month, Abdullah (21) was a feared enforcer for a gang of radical Islamists with links to al-Qaeda that has infiltrated the Ain al-Hilweh camp for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, determined to take control of it.
He and fellow members of Esbat al-Ansar, whose name means League of Warriors, patrolled their tiny patch of the camp with guns and explosives, forcing residents to comply with a strict interpretation of Islamic piety.
With the collusion of other small radical groups, they turned the camp, home for more than 75,000 people, into a haven for Islamic fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden, and an ideological battleground where the plight and cause of the refugees had no place.
Young men who cut their hair in the current Lebanese razor-cut style that resembles that of the US Marines were set upon and beaten up. Women who refused to wear headscarves were harassed until they covered up. One housewife had her shopping bags seized and set alight because she was bringing home fashion magazines.
Abdullah himself "threw explosives in the street and just ran amok" as his group tried to extend its control beyond Tawareh Street, a narrow alley inside the main entrance and in full view of the Lebanese army soldiers manning the checkpoint outside, said Munir Maqdeh, a senior camp leader.
Today, the young radical's comrades wait for him to die from terrible wounds sustained when the festering rivalries erupted into open warfare that lasted days and left at least seven dead. "He has lost a kidney, and many other parts of his body," Mr Maqdeh said.
The battle for control of Ain al-Hilweh, which has subsided into an uneasy truce, has highlighted the delicacy of Lebanon's position in the Middle East and the ease with which the balance struck between the interests of Israel, the United States and Syria could be shattered.
The camp has become an anarchistic mix of seething regional rivalries, ranging from the Fatah group of the Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat to the Syrian government that controls Lebanese affairs, and the US administration which is demanding obeisance to a foreign policy that embraces Israel and opposes Islamic fundamentalism.
The Syrian government, under pressure from Washington to support the Arab-Israeli road map peace plan, recognises that its relevance to regional politics has dwindled since the war in Iraq, and, analysts say, sees control of the Palestinian camps as one of its few remaining cards in an increasingly weak hand.
To complicate matters further, Ain al-Hilweh has also become the latest battleground for the ideals of Osama bin Laden. Groups such as Esbat al-Ansar and its precursor, Jamaat al-Noor, have reportedly turned the camp into a haven for radicals who fled the American onslaught against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Israeli intelligence alleges that up to 200 al-Qaeda operatives have been given refuge within the crumbling walls of Ain al-Hilweh. Figures from sources in Lebanon range as low as a dozen.
Unlike the other 11 camps for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Ain al-Hilweh is totally outside the control of the Syrian authorities. The Lebanese army will not enter it. And Mr Maqdeh, who claimed in an interview to be the senior representative of Fatah in Lebanon, has in fact broken with Mr Arafat's group and attempts to run the camp as his own fiefdom.
It was Mr Maqdeh who ordered his own fighters, estimated by Lebanese security forces to number up to 5,000, to attack the young Islamists in order to retake control and head off threats by the Lebanese army to enter the camp if he could not.
Although he would give no details on the number of radicals in the camp, and denied the presence of al-Qaeda, Mr Maqdeh said: "We don't consider anyone to be a radical who opposes the Israeli occupation of Palestine."
The wounded Abdullah, who is Lebanese and inherited the leadership of Esbat al-Ansar from his father, Hicham, is one of a growing group of non-Palestinian youths inside the teeming camp whose allegiances have little to do with the cause of the Palestinians who are fighting for an independent homeland and who account for the bulk of Ain al-Hilweh's residents.
Members of his group and others who joined it in the fatal battles against Mr Maqdeh's faction consider themselves to be Islamic warriors, said Dr Sammir Kassir, a Lebanese academic, writer and political analyst.
"They are Islamic fundamentalists, they are not connected to Palestine but to world jihad, and this makes it a more volatile situation because they have no political reference locally, or even in the region," Dr Kassir said.
"No one is in charge of Ain al-Hilweh," he said. "Because of the overcrowding it is the biggest camp in Lebanon, but because no one is in charge, no one can guarantee security or even a decent level of living."
Barbed wire and Lebanese army checkpoints ring the Ain al-Hilweh camp, which occupies 1.5 square kilometres outside Saida, an hour's drive south of Beirut and five minutes' walk from the Mediterranean beaches.
Within its crumbling walls, people endure fetid squalor with no civic services. Garbage is strewn throughout and stinking, stagnant water lies in gutters, breeding disease. Tiny shops, their produce spilling from darkened interiors, sell snack food and soft drinks, sacks of grain and cheap clothing.
Young listless men slouch on chairs outside car-repair workshops, and the tight laneways are clogged with the rusting hulks of old cars.
Unemployment in Ain al-Hilweh runs at more than 70 per cent as residents are forbidden from seeking work in 72 specific categories. This leaves them little option but to look for day labouring jobs on construction sites outside.
Lebanese authorities also forbid camp residents from taking in building materials, exacerbating the overcrowding and creating a vicious cycle in which the unbearable conditions contribute to the camp's volatility.