IS fighters depart from Lebanese-Syrian border under Syrian regime escort

A convoy of Islamic State fighters and their families began to depart the Lebanon-Syria border zone on Monday under Syrian military escort, surrendering their enclave and leaving for eastern Syria after a week-long battle.

A line of ambulances and buses were shown on Syrian state television driving slowly through the arid countryside, the border’s pale hills behind them, as they departed.

It will end any Sunni militant presence on the border, an important goal for Lebanon and the Shi’ite Hezbollah group, and is the first time Islamic State has publicly agreed to a forced evacuation from territory it held in Syria.

Islamic State agreed a ceasefire on Sunday with the Lebanese army on one front and the Syrian army and Hezbollah on the other after losing much of its mountainous enclave straddling the border, paving the way for its evacuation.

Both Hezbollah and Lebanese officials have billed the evacuation as a surrender by the jihadist group.

“We do not bargain. We are in the position of the victor and are imposing conditions,” Lebanese Internal Security General Abbas Ibrahim said on Sunday.

Hezbollah, a Lebanese group, has been a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad through Syria’s six-year civil war.

The Lebanese army said its offensive against Islamic State did not involve coordination with Hezbollah or the Syrian army.

A commander in the pro-Assad military alliance said Syria and Hezbollah had accepted Islamic State’s evacuation rather than a fight to the end to avert a bloody war of attrition.

Islamic State fighters were sheltering among civilians and to complete the offensive would have involved great bloodshed, the commander added. “Every battle that ends with negotiation or surrender is a victory,” the commander said.

(Source: Reuters)