In the middle of the road into the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon, scene of fierce fighting for the past three days, a woman lay shot, her body convulsing, unreachable by the army and Red Cross as snipers continued to fire over her.

Inside the devastated camp, residents waited without water or electricity for a ceasefire to come into effect. Coming under sniper fire from two positions, a woman clutching her child screamed, "Take us out of here, please take us out of here, they are going to kill us."

Peering out from a doorway, an older woman cried out, ducking as the bullets cracked and hissed through the air. "We have children in here, they need milk. Help us."

Many of the villagers wanted to flee but said they were refugees and had nowhere to go, even if they were able to escape the camp. But late last night thousands were on the move - women clutching children and piling up in pickup trucks, some waving white flags, others fleeing on foot. Ambulances could be seen evacuating the wounded. UN relief officials said they expected up to 10,000 refugees to flee the camp through the night.

Earlier, inside a destroyed ceramics shop, a family taking shelter were huddled in the middle of the room, surrounded by shattered porcelain, taking cover from snipers at the front and rear of the building.

"We just want to leave," said 32-year-old mother Wafa. "We have been trapped here for three days. The army is shooting at us, Fatah al-Islam is shooting at us."

The family said there had been massive civilian casualties inflicted by both the militants and the army's indiscriminate shelling.

Some neighbourhoods had been completely destroyed, with most homes in the camp riddled with bullet holes or shrapnel scars.

Shattered glass lay strewn across the camp's narrow streets, blast-blackened shop fronts spilling out onto the road where cars ripped apart by mortar fire lay twisted and burnt.

One resident, Marwan, described a street in the centre of town littered with bodies and said many people who had taken refuge in the ground floor of their homes were now buried under rubble. "It's terrible here, there is no electricity and that means no water. There is no clinic to tend the wounded in the camp so many may die."

He described how the camp's mosque had been converted into a makeshift clinic where doctors from the camp were doing their best to treat the many wounded.

After much deliberation with the army and confirmation of a limited ceasefire a convoy of UN trucks bearing water, milk, food and other supplies as well as a generator was allowed into the camp. Before it was able to unload the supplies it came under mortar fire, from the army according to one witness, and had to abandon the water and generator trucks half-destroyed by the explosions.

Residents described their hostility towards the Fatah al-Islam militants, "They are holding us hostage, we feel as if we have been kidnapped," said Marwan, a former military commander of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. "We are pleading with the army to stop shelling the camp. When you rescue a hijacked plane, you kill the hijacker, not all the hostages."

Residents described a huge riot against the militants in the camp, where 300 residents had taken to the streets to demand they leave the camp.

"Fatah al-Islam fired on the demonstrators and everybody fled," said 51-year-old Nour. "Everybody has wanted to leave since Sunday but the army wouldn't let us out. They even shot at the ambulances coming in to help us."

At the south entrance to the camp nervous soldiers aggressively searched the ambulance, shouting at the medics. The Palestinian Red Crescent vehicles were relaying wounded from the makeshift clinic to the camp entrance where Lebanese Red Cross ambulances would take them on to the hospital in Tripoli.

The Red Cross, staffed entirely by unpaid volunteers, had taken on nearly 200 extra staff to cope with the overwhelming number of wounded.

A slow trickle of residents had managed to get out of the camp, braving the sniper fire with only white flags to protect them.

One witness described more than 50 bodies in the street, "You can smell them, and the smell is getting worse."

The man blamed the Lebanese government for the carnage, "The government is attacking us. We don't know why. They are meant to be hitting Fatah al-Islam but they are only killing civilians."