US-led strike in Syria blocks IS ‘evacuated’ from Lebanon

Soldiers’ bodies found along border

The US-led coalition carried out an air strike on Wednesday to block Islamic State group fighters evacuated from Lebanon from reaching eastern Syria, its spokesman told AFP.

Hundreds of IS fighters and civilians were evacuated Monday from the border region between Lebanon and Syria under a ceasefire deal and were headed to an IS-held town near Syria’s eastern frontier with Iraq.

“To prevent the convoy from moving further east, we cratered the road and destroyed a small bridge,” said coalition spokesman Colonel Ryan Dillon.

The coalition later specified that it “struck individual vehicles and fighters that were clearly identified as IS” on a road leading east to the Syrian town of Albukamal on the border with Iraq.

“IS is a global threat; relocating terrorists from one place to another for someone else to deal with is not a lasting solution,” Dillon said.

The evacuation deal was negotiated between IS and powerful Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, which has intervened in the war in neighbouring Syria to prop up the Damascus government.

Hezbollah had fought a week-long offensive against IS on the Syrian side of the border with Lebanon, coinciding with a simultaneous assault by Lebanese troops on their side of the frontier.

The battles ended Sunday with the announcement of a deal that would see IS forces bussed hundreds of kilometres (miles) from Syria’s western border with Lebanon to its eastern frontier with Iraq.

Jihadists and civilians, including children, left the border region two days ago, but on Wednesday their buses were still held up at the entrance to Deir Ezzor province.

“We know and understand that there are civilians” aboard the buses, Dillon said.

“If we are able to strike them without harming civilians, then we will do so,” he said, adding that the coalition was monitoring the convoy’s movement in real time.

Asked whether the presence of civilians had prompted the coalition to bomb the road instead of the convoy itself, Dillon said that would be “consistent” with protocol.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP that the buses were in Hmaymah, a Syrian town dozens of kilometres from the Iraqi border.

There was no immediate reaction to the strike from Hezbollah or from Syria’s government.

The evacuation agreement had sparked a furious reaction from the United States, which considers Hezbollah to be a “terrorist” organisation.

“Irreconcilable #ISIS terrorists should be killed on the battlefield, not bused across #Syria to the Iraqi border without #Iraq’s consent,” US presidential envoy to the anti-IS coalition Brett McGurk said Wednesday.

“Our coalition will help ensure that these terrorists can never enter #Iraq or escape from what remains of their dwindling ‘caliphate’,” he wrote on Twitter.

It was also met with outrage in Iraq, with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi describing it as “unacceptable” and an “insult to the Iraqi people”.

Iraqi forces, who reseized second city Mosul from IS in July after a ninemonth battle, are fighting the last pocket of jihadists in the northern province of Nineveh.

The deal was even controversial in Lebanon, where opponents were angry that IS fighters were travelling “on airconditioned buses” after having been suspected of killing Lebanese troops.

On Wednesday, Lebanon’s president and the chief of the army hailed the “victory” scored against IS in the campaign.

“Today, we are announcing Lebanon’s victory against terrorism. I dedicate this victory to all Lebanese, who can be proud of their army,” President Michel Aoun said at the presidential palace in Baabda, east of Beirut.

After Sunday’s deal, IS fighters who had surrendered led Lebanese authorities to human remains believed to belong to Lebanese soldiers kidnapped by IS in 2014.

The Lebanese army had called the fate of the soldiers a “top concern” in its week-long offensive against IS.

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BEIRUT: Lebanon has identified the bodies of six of its soldiers found along the Syrian border in an area held by Islamic State until three days ago, sources in the president’s office said.

The Lebanese army launched an offensive this month which ended with Islamic State militants leaving their last foothold along the border on Sunday.

Since then the army has found 10 bodies in the area. DNA tests confirmed that six of those belonged to Lebanese soldiers, the sources and local media reported on Wednesday.

Islamic State militants had for years held territory along the border, and captured 10 Lebanese soldiers in 2014 when they briefly overran the town of Arsal, one of the worst spillovers of the Syrian conflict into Lebanon.

The militants and their families left the border area on Sunday under a ceasefire deal.

The agreement included IS militants identifying where they had buried the soldiers’ bodies, Lebanese army chief General Joseph Aoun said on Wednesday.