Daesh convoy appears to have turned back: US-led coalition

BEIRUT: A convoy of Daesh fighters appears to have turned back after US-led airstrikes thwarted its attempt to reach territory held by the militant group in eastern Syria, the head of US-led forces fighting Daesh said on Thursday.

More than 300 lightly armed Daesh fighters and about 300 family members were evacuated from Syria’s western border with Lebanon under a cease-fire agreement involving the ultra-hard-line group, the Syrian Army and the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah.

On Thursday, the fighters sought to move into Daesh-held territory from a new location after US-led strikes on Wednesday stopped them joining forces with their terrorist comrades, a commander in the pro-Syrian regime military alliance said.

However, US Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the commander of US-led forces fighting Daesh, told a Pentagon briefing that the convoy had turned back into Syrian regime territory.

“When I walked into this conference about an hour ago, the buses were on the move. They had turned and had driven back into regimeheld areas,” he told reporters via a video teleconference from Baghdad.

“We haven’t struck the convoy. But we have struck every ISIS (Daesh) fighter and/or vehicle that has tried to approach that convoy. And we’ll continue to do that,” he said.

The coalition opposes experienced combatants being moved to a battle zone in which it is active, and used warplanes on Wednesday to halt the convoy by damaging the road ahead. It also struck fighters on their way to meet the convoy.

A commander in the pro-Syrian regime military alliance said the convoy had headed north toward the town of Sukhna on Thursday after being halted in the desert, and would try to reach Deir Ezzor province, close to the border with Iraq.

Two sources familiar with US policy on Syria said the airstrikes did not signal a more aggressive military approach, and were intended to prevent the Daesh fighters in the convoy reinforcing their comrades in Deir Ezzor.

But the standoff shows the tangled nature of a war theater divided into several overlapping conflicts, and where the engagement of local, regional and global powers is further complicated by a mosaic of alliances and enmities.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah-affiliated media have reported that the Syrian town of Al-Bukamal, close to the border with Iraq, is the final destination for the convoy.

On Thursday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Syrian President Bashar Assad had only reluctantly agreed to the evacuation after Nasrallah visited Damascus to request it, a rare public acknowledgment that he had traveled outside Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah said it retrieved the corpse of Muhsin Hajji, a fighter with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), from Daesh on Thursday.

The corpse was transported through Palmyra. DNA tests are being carried out before taking the body to Iran via Damascus.

Under the deal, Daesh is to deliver the bodies of two more fighters, and a prisoner captured in Palmyra.