After deal, IS allowed to leave Syria and Lebanon border area

‘Raqqa battle should end in 2 months’

RAS BAALBEK, Lebanon, Aug 28, (Agencies): Islamic State militants and their families began leaving a border area between Lebanon and Syria on Monday as part of a controversial negotiated deal with the extremist group to end its presence there, Lebanese and Syrian media reported.

An unidentified number of militants and their families headed in buses toward a town held by the Islamic State group in far eastern Syria, near the border with Iraq. The evacuation will effectively end the presence of Sunni militant groups on the border, after al-Qaeda-linked fighters evacuated earlier this month.

The transfer comes nearly a week after Lebanon launched a military campaign to drive IS from the rugged mountainous area along its border with Syria.

The Syrian army and the Lebanese Hezbollah group, which has been fighting alongside President Bashar Assad’s forces in Syria since 2013, have been waging their own separate but simultaneous offensive to pressure IS on the Syrian side of the border.

Nearly two dozen buses and 11 ambulances carried the militants and their families Monday from the area straddling the Syria-Lebanon border toward the IS-held town of Boukamal in eastern Syria.

Syrian Al-Ikhbariya TV reported that there were about 250 militants in the transfer. The Central Military Center, a media outlet run by Hezbollah, said ambulances ferried 25 IS wounded fighters from the area.

The Lebanese military on Monday took journalists on a tour of areas along the border near Ras Baalbek that were recaptured from IS in the past week. Soldiers, tanks and armored vehicles were heavily deployed along the border area, and caves used by IS bore signs of damage from the recent fighting. About 5,000 Lebanese soldiers took part in the offensive.

A senior Lebanese military official said a number of militants were also leaving from the Lebanese side of the border, to be transferred with the Syrian convoy. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not part of the negotiations, did not have a number for militants leaving Lebanon.

The transfer of the militants is part of a deal that came into effect following negotiations, led by Hezbollah, to determine the fate of nine Lebanese soldiers who were kidnapped in 2014.

On Sunday, the Lebanese army, on one side, and Hezbollah and the Syrian army on another, declared separate but simultaneous cease-fires. Shortly afterward, the remains of eight soldiers were located and exhumed in an area near the border with Syria. The fate of one soldier remains unclear. The bodies of five Hezbollah fighters killed in fighting the militants were also handed over, allowing for the transfer of militants.

The Lebanese government and Hezbollah both cast the evacuation deal as a victory and a capitulation by IS but many in Lebanon, particularly the families of the dead soldiers, were bitterly opposed to the deal, which they said allowed their sons’ killers to leave in air-conditioned buses back to Syria.

Al-Ikhbariya said the Syrian government approved the transfer of militants to Boukamal to facilitate the talks over the fate of the soldiers.

Meanwhile, the battle to oust Islamic State from its stronghold in the Syrian city of Raqqa should end within two months, a top-ranking Kurdish commander told Reuters, but said she expects the fighting to intensify.

Nowruz Ahmed sits on the military council of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and as one of a small number of members of its Raqqa general command is one of the most senior commanders in the offensive.

Islamic State has lost swathes of territory since 2015 in both Syria and Iraq, including the Iraqi city of Mosul. In Syria, under separate attacks from a US-led coalition and from the Russianbacked Syrian army, it is falling back on its strongholds along the Euphrates valley east of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the caliphate it declared in 2014.

“We cannot determine the time period in which the battle of Raqqa will end precisely because war has its conditions. But we do not expect it to last long, and according to our plans the battle will not take longer than two months from now,” Ahmed said.

The SDF alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias is fighting inside Raqqa’s city centre, with the help of air strikes and special forces from the US-led coalition. They pushed into the city in June after battling for months to encircle it.

Ahmed said the SDF was focused on the Raqqa battle for now and had not yet set plans to launch an assault in Deir al-Zor province, which is further down the Euphrates towards the Iraqi frontier and remains almost entirely under IS control.

Ahmed, a women’s rights activist before Syria’s civil war began in 2011, heads the all female counterpart to the Kurdish YPG militia. The YPG is the most powerful component of the SDF, and the female unit has played a leading frontline role on the battlefield during the Raqqa campaign. She spoke to Reuters in Raqqa in what she said was her first interview with the media.

She estimated Islamic State had between 700 and 1,000 fighters left in Raqqa, mainly at the centre of the city. The SDF has encircled the militants and captured around 60 percent of the city.

The SDF had a solid core of about 15,000 fighters in the Raqqa offensive, Ahmed said. Before the fighting began late last year, it had over 50,000 forces and has continuously enrolled new ones, she added.

The presence of an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 civilians besieged in Raqqa, including families of IS fighters from outside the city, has hampered the advance, said Ahmed.

“During our incursions, we try to open safe passages for them so they would not be a target of our attacks, but there are also many mines that led to the deaths of civilians,” she said.