Eight people, including six members of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, were killed and 25 others wounded when the secular faction clashed with an Islamic group in south Lebanon Palestinian refugee camp, medical sources said. The six Fatah militiamen were killed during firefights with automatic and anti-tank weapons Monday against members of the Osbat al-Nour group seeking revenge for the near-fatal Fatah shooting on Saturday of their leader, Abdullah Shraidi. A member of Osbat al-Nour and a civilian were also killed in the shooting, which subsided later in the day following calls by leaders in the camp which is home to around 65,000 people, the largest in Lebanon. Twenty-five people were wounded, mostly civilians including women and children, the medical sources said. Schools in the Ain el-Helweh camp were shut and most stores kept their shutters down at the height of the fighting, which provoked an exodus by hundreds of camp residents. "The fighting broke out around noon when roughly 200 fundamentalist fighters holed up in three strongholds opened fire with all kinds of weapons on Fatah offices," a senior Palestinian official told AFP on condition of anonymity. "Shaken up by the Fatah attempt on Shraidi's life, the fundamentalists regrouped and counter-attacked to show Arafat's partisans they would not go quietly but resist attempts to chase them out of Ain el-Helweh," added the official, who belongs to neither faction. AFP photographer Mahmoud Zayyat was shot in the foot, and bursts of gunfire and powerful blasts could be heard in Sidon, a coastal town nearby, but fighting died down after calls for a ceasefire were made over the loudspeakers of mosques. On Saturday, Shraidi, three of his bodyguards and a passer-by were shot near an office belonging to Fatah. One bodyguard and the bystander were killed in that attack, which seriously wounded the chief of Osbat al-Nour, a splinter faction of Osbat al-Ansar. Shraidi's two other bodyguards were said to be seriously hurt. They were returning from the funeral of a relative of the chief, Ibrahim Shraidi, gunned down earlier that same day by unknown assailants. The Shraidis are one of the biggest clans in Ain el-Helweh. Fatah's leader in Lebanon, Sultan Abul Aynain, acknowledged Sunday his group had shot the Osbat al-Nour chief, whom he accused of terrorising the camp. Shraidi's entourage had taunted and provoked Fatah members to shoot at them as they passed by Saturday, he said. Abul Aynain told AFP Fatah was "forced to decide his (Shraidi's) fate". He also blamed Shraidi, whose group is said to be growing in influence, for the deaths of seven Fatah members and four civilians in the past few years. The country's 12 Palestinian camps are not controlled by the Lebanese army and host an array of armed groups. "Fatah has taken on the fundamentalists by itself, and it's likely the attempt to impose its rule will not succeed, with civilians paying the price once more," the senior official in the camp said. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Lebanese soldiers take position during clashes at the entrance of the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh in the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon.(AFP/Joseph Barrak)