ISIS fighters, families flee stalled convoy
BEIRUT — Dozens of Islamic State group members and their families have crossed into areas controlled by the extremists despite U.S. threats to bomb the convoy days after they left the Lebanon-Syria border, Syrian opposition activists said Saturday.
The opposition activists’ announcement came after the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State said the 17-bus convoy of Islamic State militants and their families that left the Lebanon-Syria border six days ago is still stranded in the Syrian desert.
More than 300 militants and their families are in the convoy after vacating the border area as part of a Hezbollah-negotiated deal to transport them to an Islamic Stateheld town in eastern Syria, near the Iraqi border.
Hezbollah said in a statement Saturday that warplanes of the U.S.-led coalition are still preventing the convoy from moving east and barring
anyone on the government side from reaching them, warning that the wounded and elderly people could die.
Hezbollah said six buses are still in areas controlled by the Syrian government and warned that if they are hit civilians will be killed. It added that if aid does not reach the convoy because of the aerial-imposed siege, “only the Americans will bear the responsibility” for what happens.
“The so-called international community and international institutions should intervene to prevent the occurrence of an ugly massacre,” the Lebanese group said.
The U.S.-led coalition issued a statement Friday saying it has sought an unspecified solution that would save the women and children in the convoy from further suffering.
Earlier last week, an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition created a crater in a road that the buses had intended to take and destroyed a small bridge to prevent the convoy from moving farther east.
Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said dozens of fighters and civilians left the buses and drove into Islamic State-held parts of the eastern province of Deir el-Zour in 12 civilian vehicles.
Opposition activist Omar Abu Laila, who is from Deir el-Zour and currently lives in Europe, gave an account similar to that of Abdurrahman, adding that most of them have crossed over. Abu Laila is with DeirEzzor 24, an activist group that has reporters throughout the eastern province.
Meanwhile, in central Syria, government forces captured wide areas from the Islamic State under the cover of Russian airstrikes, forcing hundreds of people to flee to government-controlled areas as well as areas run by insurgent groups.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday that Syrian forces backed by Russian warplanes have “liberated” the town of Aqeirbat, defeating a large Islamic State contingent. “The last major center of resistance of terrorists in the central part of Syria has been eliminated,” the ministry said in a statement cited by state news agency TASS.
The Observatory said the fighting made some 750 people, many of them women and children, flee to areas controlled by the al-Qaidalinked Levant Liberation Committee, a main rival of the Islamic State. It said thousands more are waiting for a safe corridor in order to flee areas controlled by the Islamic State.