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BEIRUT - Six members of a small Palestinian group have confessed to bombing two buses in Lebanon last month, killing three people, security sources said today.
They said the six members of Fateh al-Islam were arrested after explosives were found in an apartment in the Christian Beirut neighbourhood of Ashrafiyeh.
Fateh al-Islam denied any link to the bus bombs.
"If a man had been killed in the Amazon forest, Fateh al-Islam would have been accused of his murder," it said in a statement.
The bombing on February 13 struck the buses in a Christian area northeast of Beirut a day before the second anniversary of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.
The bombing had been added to a list of attacks being investigated by a UN inquiry into the Hariri killing. Fateh al-Islam broke away last year from Fateh al-Intifada, a Palestinian group close to Syria.
Media loyal to the anti-Syrian coalition which controls the Beirut government has reported that Fateh al-Islam, which has some 200 members, takes orders from Damascus, which the governing coalition blames for the Hariri killing.
Syria denies involvement in the Hariri assassination and other attacks on anti-Syrian figures which followed.
Fateh al-Islam first emerged in the Palestinian refugee camp of Bedawi in north Lebanon.
Governing coalition leaders said the Feb. 13 bombing was designed to deter their supporters from attending a Beirut rally to mark the Hariri killing and to bolster their camp against a political challenge by the opposition.
The opposition includes Hezbollah and Amal, which are both close to Damascus.
- REUTERS
