The fugitive leader of a Sunni extremist group who led a prolonged standoff against the Lebanese Army last year at a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli, Lebanon, may have been killed or captured in Syria, according to a statement posted by the group on militant Web sites.

During the summer of 2007, the Lebanese Army battled fighters from a militant group, Fatah al Islam, which claims to have allegiances with Al Qaeda, in the Nahr al Bared refugee camp.

The army routed the group and nearly leveled the camp, but the group’s leader, Shakir al-Abssi, was never caught. In the statement posted on Web sites on Monday, the group said that Mr. Abssi had fled to Syria, where he tried to rebuild his organization, but that he and two companions were ambushed by what it called Syrian security agents as they were going to meet supporters. Mr. Abssi may have died in the resulting hourlong firefight, the Fatah al Islam statement said.

The group named Abu Muhammad Awad as his successor, according to the statement.

“Up to this moment, we have no knowledge, even though we are inclined to think they died,” according to the statement, which was provided by the SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that monitors militant Web sites. “Yet, we have no evidence that proves this matter to us,” the statement said.

Its authenticity could not be verified. A senior Syrian security official could not confirm Mr. Abssi’s death or capture.

Last year Lebanese officials said they believed that Mr. Abssi had died in the last hours of the 15-week battle, but DNA testing of a body thought to be his proved negative, and a captured member of his group told officials he had escaped the night before the army’s final assault.

Tensions have lingered in Tripoli since then, and many in the city say they believe that a series of attacks on the Lebanese Army earlier this year were meant to avenge the Fatah al Islam militants killed in the fighting last year. In August, a bomb hidden in a briefcase tore through a bus packed with soldiers on their way to work, killing 15 people, including nine soldiers, and in September, a remotely detonated car bomb exploded near another bus carrying army troops, killing four soldiers and a civilian.

The Syrian government blamed Fatah al Islam for a bombing in September in Damascus that killed 17 people and was the deadliest attack in Syria since the 1980s. Syrian state television showed what it said were 12 members of the group, including Mr. Abssi’s daughter, confessing that they had helped plan the attack.

Mr. Abssi was convicted and sentenced to death in Jordan for helping to organize the 2002 assassination of an American diplomat, Laurence Foley. Court papers show that he worked with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who was killed in 2006 by United States forces in Iraq.

Graham Bowley reported from New York, and Souad Mekhennet from Frankfurt. Robert F. Worth contributed reporting from Mumbai, India.

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