U.S. airstrikes block convoy moving ISIS troops

Safe-passage deal with Lebanon foils effort to keep fight in Syria

BEIRUT — U.S. airstrikes stranded a convoy of Islamic State fighters in the middle of Syria on Wednesday, punctuating the U.S. military’s anger over a deal struck a few days earlier giving them safe passage to militant-held territory on the border with Iraq.

The airstrikes blocked the road on which the Islamic State convoy of buses and ambulances was traveling.

Other U.S. airstrikes hit militants apparently racing to join the stranded militants, according to the spokesman for the U.S.led military coalition in Iraq and Syria, Col. Ryan Dillon.

“We did conduct strikes to crater the road, and we destroyed a small bridge to prevent that convoy from moving further east,” Dillon said. “The convoy of buses and ambulances has not been struck, but there have been individual vehicles and individuals clearly identified as ISIS, and we did strike those,” Dillon said. “If we can strike ISIS where we’re able to do so without harming civilians, we will do that.” The Islamic State is also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Dillon said the airstrikes had stopped the Islamic State convoy before it reached militantheld territory, which meant the stranded fighters were deep within an area dominated by the Syrian government and its allies.

The convoy had been traveling from west to east. The Islamic State fighters bombed by the coalition apparently had been coming to their rescue, on the same highway but from east to west. There were no reports from Syria that the convoy had reached its destination in Deir el-Zour province in eastern Syria, the last major Islamic State stronghold.

The Lebanese army, in coordination with Hezbollah and the Syrian army, arranged on Monday for 670 Islamic State fighters and their relatives to be taken in buses and ambulances from the Lebanese-Syrian border, near the town of Arsal, nearly 300 miles across Syrian government held territory, to Abu Kamal, close to the border with Iraq.

The group made the safe-passage deal to try to win the freedom of its fighters in exchange for turning over the bodies of nine Lebanese soldiers taken prisoner in 2014.

The bodies were given back to Lebanese forces between Sunday and Tuesday.

Dillon said the pact undermined efforts to fight the Islamic State in Syria. Iraq, normally an ally of the Syrian government, joined the U.S. military in criticizing the pact.

By Wednesday, it was unclear how far the convoy had traveled, but Dillon said it was his understanding the coalition had stopped it before it reached militant-held territory in Deir el-Zour province, and would not allow it to continue farther east.