Us-led air strikes blow a hole in deal to evacuate 300 Isil fighters

Coalition reacts furiously to agreement allowing fighters and families to travel to Syria-iraq border

Josie Ensor and

Luna Safwan in Beirut

A CONVOY of hundreds of Isil fighters was stranded in Syria last night after a controversial evacuation deal was thwarted at the last minute by a Us-led air strike which blocked their route.

Three hundred Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) militants and 300 of their family members were being bussed from the border region between Lebanon and Syria to an Isilheld town near Syria’s eastern frontier with Iraq, after agreeing a surrender.

The deal was struck between the militants, the powerful Lebanese Shia militia Hizbollah and both the Lebanese and Syrian governments, invoking furious reaction from both the US and Iraq.

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

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

The coalition said in a statement it had not been party to the agreement and that any “counter-isil words ring hollow” when Hizbollah and the Syrian regime “cut deals with and allow terrorists to transit territory under their control”.

The jihadists and civilians, including children, left the border region in 14 buses and 11 ambulances on Monday, but yesterday their buses were still held up on the outskirts of Hama province, bordering their destination in Isil-held Deir Ezzor.

No explanation was offered for the delay. The buses had been escorted by the Syrian army from the Lebanese border only up to the halfway point in Homs, Hama province.

The US decided against a direct strike on the convoy due to the presence of civilians, including the bus drivers and relatives of the jihadists. Each bus was believed to contain at least one non-combatant.

Haidar al-abadi, the Iraqi prime minister, called the deal, which would see hundreds of extremists dumped on its border, an “insult to the Iraqi people”. ♦ Jordan and Iraq reopened their only border crossing yesterday, saying security had been restored three years after Isil seized control of the frontier areas.

The border crossing is part of a crucial route linking the Iraqi and Jordanian capitals, and its reopening comes after Iraqi forces managed to retake most of the territory seized by Isil in 2014.