TRIPOLI, Lebanon — Lebanon’s soldiers clashed for a second day with Islamist militants in the northern city of Tripoli as Lebanese officials accused neighboring Syria of sparking the bloodshed that may have killed 70 people.

Gunfights Sunday killed about 40 people, including 27 soldiers, the state-owned National News Agency said. As well as the soldiers and militants, another 30 people may have died Monday and yesterday inside the Nahr el-Bared camp, which houses about 30,000 Palestinian refugees and is at the center of the fighting, the agency reported.

Television footage on Arab and international channels showed smoke rising above Tripoli, a predominantly Sunni Muslim city, as the army aimed shells at militants from the Palestinian Arab group Fatah al-Islam. A two-hour ceasefire was brokered yesterday by the International Committee of the Red Cross to evacuate the wounded and remove bodies, the state news agency said.

While all major political parties in Lebanon, including those allied with Syria, said they supported the Lebanese army and condemned Fatah al-Islam, the violence may be an attempt by Syria to keep pressure on the Lebanese government, analysts and Lebanese government members said.

“This is another attempt to blackmail Lebanon,” the Lebanese minister of telecommunications, Marwan Hamadeh, said in a telephone interview yesterday, accusing Syria of instigating and supporting the group. “Lebanon will not submit to this kind of pressure.”

Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations said his government had nothing to do with the violence and that Fatah al-Islam’s leaders are members of Al Qaeda who had been jailed in Syria for terrorist activities.

“They spent 3 to 4 years in jail for belonging to Al Qaeda,” Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari told reporters at the UN. “After they were freed, we noticed that they came back to some of their terrorist practices in the field of training some new elements. Then they ran away from Syrian justice.”

The U.S. State Department’s report on terrorism for 2006 describes Fatah al-Islam as linked to Al Qaeda and says the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon have become “safe havens” for the group.

America gave its support to the Lebanese army’s attacks. “It would appear that the Lebanese security forces are working in a legitimate manner” in response to “provocations and attacks by violent extremists who have operated out of a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington.

The Lebanese, American, and French governments want an international tribunal set up to try Syrian officials who they say were behind a series of assassinations in Lebanon, including the 2005 car-bomb killing of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Hariri had been pressing for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, where they had been stationed since the end of the country’s 1975-1990 civil war.

The Syrian troops left Lebanon later in 2005. Since last summer’s war between Israel and the Shiite Muslim militia group Hezbollah, Shiite, and Christian political parties supported by Syria have pushed for the Lebanese government to step down, saying it’s too close to America.

“The Syrians have a lot of interest in keeping pressure on Lebanon and taking advantage of the country’s precarious situation,” a former French diplomat who founded and runs Paris-based Terrorisc, a risk analyst specializing in the Middle East, Anne Giudicelli, said. “Obviously, it’s hard to have proof.”

The fighting erupted after security forces raided a building in Tripoli to arrest suspects in a bank robbery, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported. Alleged members of Fatah al-Islam then attacked army posts at Nahr el-Bared, the BBC said.

Mr. Hamadeh said the fighting was dragging on because the militants were using the camp’s population as human shields.

“The innocent Palestinians inside the camp are hostages,” Mr. Hamadeh said. “Our biggest fear is if this issue spreads beyond the camp.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Kimoon asked parties to the conflict to “exercise maximum restraint” and said he had been on the phone with Middle East leaders to express his concern.

Fatah al-Islam is an Islamic splinter group of the mainstream and secular Palestinian Fatah group. It has no more than a few dozen members, the deputy director general of GEOS, another Paris-based risk analyst, Alain Flandrois, said.

The group has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, though it’s unclear whether it has any operational link to Osama bin Laden’s international terrorist group, Mr. Flandrois said.

“Saying you are Al Qaeda has a certain publicity and political impact that helps put pressure on the government,” Mr. Flandrois said. “But these groups operate with a lot of autonomy. The Lebanese are more likely to see the hand of Syria rather than Al Qaeda.”

In a statement on its official Web site, Hezbollah condemned Fatah al-Islam’s attack and praised the Lebanese army. The Hezbollah statement said that its allies, the fellow Shiite Amal group as well as the Free Patriotic Movement of Christian General Michel Aoun, also condemned the attack. Hezbollah, Amal, and Aoun are allied with Syria, oppose the international tribunal, and are pressuring the Lebanese government to step down.

The commander of the mainstream Fatah movement in Lebanon, Sultan Abu al-Aynayn, said Fatah al-Islam is a “gang of criminals” and condemned it for attacking the Lebanese army, the Beirut-based Daily Star said.

[The State Department yesterday defended the actions of Lebanese troops, declaring they are working in a “legitimate manner” against “provocations by violent extremists” operating out of a Palestinian refugee camp, the AP reported.

“This is a group that has been involved in violence to achieve whatever their stated objective may be,” spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Lebanese officials have accused Syria of using Fatah Islam to stir up trouble in Lebanon, a charge Damascus has denied. Asked specifically about a possible Syrian link, Mr. McCormack said, “At this point I wouldn’t draw that connection.”]