Beirut  - Fierce clashes erupted Monday between rival Palestinian factions in a refugee camp in south Lebanon with one person reported slain, Lebanese and Palestinian sources said.

The clashes erupted between the mainstream Fatah movement and members of a fundamentalist group called Jund al-Sham, the sources said.

A Jund al-Sham member was killed in the clashes, the sources said.

The militants exchanged machinegun fire and rocket-propelled grenades, and camp inhabitants were seen fleeing in the streets.

Jund al-Sham has in the past clashed with Fatah inside the camp, which is the largest of Lebanon's 12 Palestinian refugee camps and is a hotbed of Islamic extremists.

Jund al Sham, believed to have first appeared in 1999 in Afghanistan, was established by Syrians and Palestinians with links to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who founded al-Qaeda in Iraq and was subsequently killed by a US airstrike. (dpa)