Assad gives prayers near captured Islamic State area

BEIRUT: President Bashar al-Assad gave prayers yesterday for Aidiladha in Qara, near an enclave surrendered on Monday by Islamic State fighters.

Confined to Damascus for long periods in the early part of Syria’s six-year civil war, Assad had grown more confident in travelling around government-held areas as the army and its allies had won a series of victories.

The departure of IS and other groups from the western Qalamoun district meant that the border with Lebanon was Syria’s first to be controlled by its army since early in the conflict.

The IS fighters who evacuated the district remained stuck in a convoy yesterday, two days after the United States-led coalition against the jihadists used air strikes to block it from crossing into their main territory in eastern Syria.

Qara is only a few kilometres from mountains delineating the frontier with Lebanon, straddling which IS and other militant groups held territory until August.

The IS fighters in the border pocket accepted a truce and evacuation deal after simultaneous offensives by the Lebanese army on one front and the Syrian army and Hezbollah on the other. Part of an agreed exchange went ahead on Thursday as wounded IS fighters were swapped for bodies of pro-government forces.

But the fate of the the convoy was uncertain after the coalition said it had seen the buses turning back into Syrian government territory on Thursday.