Hundreds of ISIS fighters released

BEIRUT — Lebanon began transporting an estimated 400 armed Islamic State group fighters and family members from its northern border to the militants’ stronghold in eastern Syria on Monday, according to official sources in Lebanon and Syria.

The militants were transferred as part of a deal between the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and its Syrian and Lebanese enemies. Under the agreement, the bodies of eight people believed to be Lebanese soldiers were to be returned, while Islamic State militants were to receive 17 air-conditioned buses, 11 ambulances and a free pass through territory held by the Syrian government.

Hezbollah, the Shiitedominated group whose militia was among the parties to the deal, announced through its War Media Center that the transfer of the Islamic State fighters had begun Monday morning. First to go were 25 wounded fighters in ambulances, followed by busloads of fighters and others.

The Syrian state news agency, SANA, also confirmed that the transfer of fighters was underway.

Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, the Lebanese intelligence chief who was the government’s chief negotiator in trying to win the return of Lebanon’s captured soldiers, defended the arrangement.

“The return of Daesh militants in air-conditioned cars to their countries is permissible because Lebanon adheres to the philosophy of a state that does not exact revenge,” he said in a radio interview, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, according to the Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star.

Former President Michel Sleiman was among the Lebanese leaders who declared the deal a win for the government.

“Military victory must be supplemented by chasing down those who executed the soldiers and prosecuting them before international and Arabic tribunals,” Sleiman wrote on Twitter.