A convoy of Islamic State fighters and their families reached an exchange point in eastern Syria on Tuesday, a Hezbollah military media unit said, where they will be transferred into IS-held territory under a ceasefire deal.

BEIRUT: A convoy of Islamic State fighters and their families reached an exchange point in eastern Syria on Tuesday, a Hezbollah military media unit said, where they will be transferred into IS-held territory under a ceasefire deal.

The convoy of buses and ambulances left the Lebanon-Syria border region on Monday under Syrian military escort after a ceasefire took effect on Sunday.

The deal ended a week-long offensive with the Lebanese army on one front and Hezbollah with the Syrian army on the other against Islamic State's mountainous enclave straddling the Lebanon-Syria border.</s>BEIRUT (Reuters) - U.S.-led warplanes on Wednesday blocked a convoy of Islamic State fighters and their families from reaching territory the group holds in eastern Syria and struck some of their comrades traveling to meet them, a coalition spokesman said.

FILE PHOTO: A convoy of Islamic State fighters and their families begin to depart from the Lebanon-Syria border zone in Qalamoun, Syria August 28, 2017. REUTERS/ Omar Sanadiki

The strikes were aimed at stopping an evacuation deal for Islamic State fighters to leave their enclave on the Lebanon-Syria border for areas they hold in eastern Syria, arranged by the Lebanese Hezbollah group and the Syrian army.

It was part of a ceasefire agreed after offensives last week by the Lebanese army on one front, and the Syrian army and Hezbollah on another, that pushed Islamic State back into a small part of its enclave straddling the frontier.

The deal has been criticized by the coalition and by Iraq, whose army is also fighting Islamic State in areas contiguous with the eastern Syria region to which the convoy was headed.

The convoy, carrying 308 militants and 331 civilians according to Hezbollah, is now effectively stranded, unable to move forward into Islamic State territory.

It shows how easily such evacuations to other areas, which the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has increasingly used to push rebel pockets to surrender, can be derailed in a conflict with many sides.

A commander in the military alliance supporting Assad said the coalition had contacted the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, which is accompanying the convoy and warned that if it entered Islamic State territory, it might attack.

Islamic State is on the back foot in both Syria and Iraq, losing swathes of its territory and its most important towns and cities after taking advantage of chaos including the six-year civil war in Syria to win ground.

In Syria, the U.S.-led coalition is backing an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias in the north which are assaulting the jihadist group’s former de facto capital of Raqqa.

The Russian-backed Syrian army and allied Shi’ite militia from Iraq and Lebanon including Hezbollah have this year seized most of the central desert from the group, and are advancing eastwards to relieve the army’s besieged enclave in Deir al-Zor.

The coalition strikes to block the convoy moving into Islamic State territory took place east of Humeima, near the edge of land held by the Syrian government, coalition spokesman Ryan Dillon told Reuters.

“We did crater the road and destroyed a small bridge to prevent this convoy from moving further east,” Dillon told Reuters by phone.

He later said the coalition had struck vehicles containing Islamic State fighters that were heading to that area from deeper inside the territory they control to the east.

He did not know if the evacuation convoy, which contains buses of fighters and their family members, as well as ambulances carrying wounded fighters, was now in Islamic State or Syrian government territory.

MILITARY AID

On Tuesday morning a Hezbollah-run military media unit reported the convoy had reached an exchange point into Islamic State territory.

The evacuation deal also involved Islamic State revealing the fate of nine Lebanese soldiers it took captive in its border enclave in 2014, and surrendering Hezbollah and Syrian army prisoners and bodies in east Syria.

The commander in the pro-Assad military alliance said it was considering an alternative location for the convoy to cross into Islamic State territory.

“Now things are moving to change the place from Humeima and head north towards Sukhna,” the commander said.

“We’re not bound by these agreements,” Dillon said, apparently referring to the ceasefire deal. “They’re clearly fighters and they’re moving to another location to fight yet again.

“In accordance with the law of armed conflict ... we will strike them if we are able to do so,” he said, adding that direct strikes on the convoy would only take place if the militants could be separated from civilians.

Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the coalition, criticized the evacuation deal in a statement early on Wednesday before the strikes were reported, saying: “Relocating terrorists from one place to another for someone else to deal with is not a lasting solution”.

Separately, the leader of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, defended the Lebanese group’s involvement in the evacuation deal in a statement responding to criticism of the move from Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

Abadi said on Tuesday: “Transporting this number of terrorists from long distance to eastern Syria adjacent to Iraqi borders is unacceptable”.

Nasrallah said it was a Hezbollah deal agreed upon by the Syrian leadership, that the fighters were few in number, and were being moved from one front Hezbollah was fighting in to another.

Lebanon is a major recipient of U.S. and British military aid. It says its offensive against Islamic State last week was separate to the simultaneous one made against the same pocket from inside Syria by the Syrian army and Hezbollah, regarded by the U.S. and Britain as a terrorist group.

On Wednesday the Lebanese army said its head General Joseph Aoun had been phoned by the commander of U.S. Central Command Joseph Votel congratulating him on the offensive and pledging to continue arming Lebanon’s army.</s>A convoy of Islamic State fighters and their families reached an exchange point in eastern Syria on Tuesday, a Hezbollah military media unit said, where they will be transferred into IS-held territory under a ceasefire deal.

BEIRUT: A convoy of Islamic State fighters and their families reached an exchange point in eastern Syria on Tuesday, a Hezbollah military media unit said, where they will be transferred into IS-held territory under a ceasefire deal.

The convoy of buses and ambulances left the Lebanon-Syria border region on Monday under Syrian military escort after a ceasefire took effect on Sunday.

The deal ended a week-long offensive with the Lebanese army on one front and Hezbollah with the Syrian army on the other against Islamic State's mountainous enclave straddling the Lebanon-Syria border.</s>Update 5.12pm:The US-led coalition says it has struck an Islamic State convoy coming from militant-held territory in Syria to meet IS evacuees being transferred under a controversial deal.

US officials have criticised the transfer of hundreds of militants and civilians who are heading for an IS-held area near the Iraqi border, saying the extremists should be killed on the battlefield.

Col Ryan Dillon said the airstrike hit vehicles identified as belonging to IS that were travelling from IS-held territory toward the convoy.

Coalition officials say they are not bound by the evacuation agreement brokered by Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, and may strike the evacuees themselves.

An earlier coalition airstrike destroyed a small bridge and left craters in a road, hindering the movement of the evacuees.

There are about 300 militants and almost as many family members on buses being evacuated under the deal, which ended the IS presence along the Lebanon-Syria border.

Earlier:A convoy of Islamic State fighters evacuated from the Lebanon-Syria border under a controversial agreement is being closely monitored, officials say.

Col Ryan Dillan, a spokesman for the US-led alliance against the militants, said "we are monitoring their location in real time".

He added that the coalition "will not rule out strikes against IS fighters being moved".

He said the coalition has already bombed a small bridge to obstruct the convoy.

Syrian opposition activists say the convoy, which left the Lebanon-Syria border on Tuesday, is still in government-controlled territory in eastern Syria.

The IS militants were allowed to evacuate in buses following a Hezbollah-negotiated deal that will see them to go to IS-held territory near the Iraqi border.

Col Dillan said: "We are not party to any agreements that were made by the Lebanese Hezbollah and Isis or the (Syrian) regime."</s>American military officials said that coalition warplanes would make sure that did not happen.

“They’re on the move, they’re trying a different route, we’re watching all the way through,” the American coalition spokesman, Col. Ryan Dillon, said Thursday, by telephone from Baghdad.

Colonel Dillon said the coalition flew airstrikes Wednesday afternoon and Wednesday night against other Islamic State units that had tried to reach the convoy from inside Deir al-Zour. “If ISIS wants to continue to send known ISIS fighters and vehicles toward this convoy, we will continue to fight them,” he said.

While American soldiers and their Syrian allies are not actively fighting on the ground in Deir al-Zour, coalition airstrikes against ISIS take place daily there, and the area is expected to be the next major battlefield after the Islamic State capital of Raqqa is fully subdued.

So far the coalition has not bombed the convoy itself because it is carrying civilians, but it has not ruled out doing so if it can without harming them. On Wednesday, coalition airstrikes cratered the highway in front of the convoy and destroyed a bridge in the town of Humaimah in southeastern Homs Province, close to the Deir al-Zour provincial border, according to reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in London. This prevented it from moving ahead

On Monday morning, the Islamic State fighters had agreed to pull out of a 27-square-mile enclave they held on the border between Lebanon and Syria, near the Lebanese town of Arsal, in a deal they cut with both governments, and with Hezbollah militiamen from Lebanon who are fighting alongside the Syrians. Under the deal, Lebanon received the remains of nine soldiers taken prisoner by ISIS in 2014; the ISIS fighters received free passage to Deir al-Zour, 300 miles to the east.

From the beginning, the convoy encountered problems. Instead of heading due east, it turned north and to the city of Homs. There it transferred to buses and ambulances reportedly sent by the Islamic State and then headed east Tuesday morning. For some reason — possibly concern about airstrikes — what would normally be a 10-hour trip took most of the next two days.

The buses were labeled with signs in their windshields, B-1 through B-17. In bus B-9 a laughing militant could clearly be seen with an AK-47. One bus carried the name of a tour company, Happy Journeys. Another was emblazoned with the improbable company name “NOPLAN.”

Throughout, Islamic State media outlets have been unusually silent about the deal to give up Arsal, the last significant ISIS enclave on the Lebanese border. For the militants, who normally pledge to fight to the death, the optics were humiliating. Video posted online showed busloads of militants, many of them hurriedly covering their faces with their kefeiyah scarves, driving through lines of Hezbollah and Lebanese army fighters who waved flags and laughed at them.

Rita Katz, head of the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors ISIS and other extremists online, said that ISIS supporters refused to believe the Islamic State had made the deal to evacuate. “Some users on a pro-ISIS chat group called reports of the event ‘Fake news,’ asking, ‘Since when is news from Hezbollah authentic?’” she said. “One user wrote, ‘No need to respond to these ridiculous claims, it is known to everyone that Islamic State fighters ride on VBIED’S, not green buses.’” The reference was to vehicle borne improvised explosive devices, or car bombs

Al Akhbar, a newspaper in Lebanon that generally supports Hezbollah, reported that Islamic State forces in eastern Syria were upset with the convoy’s occupants for abandoning their border enclave. They did so after an apparently coordinated weeklong offensive against them by the Lebanese Army, Hezbollah and the Syrian Army, which had them surrounded.

Once the convoy was blocked in Humaimah on Wednesday, it apparently had to negotiate permission from the Syrian regime and its Hezbollah allies to try another route. Hezbollah then demanded that the ISIS militants turn over the body of an Iranian fighter whom they had killed, the Reuters news agency reported, quoting the Syrian military source. It was not clear if that was a new deal, or part of the original deal on Sunday.

In any case, the convoy turned back on Thursday, looping west and north to try to reach Deir al-Zour through Sukhna. Further complicating matters for the convoy, the Syrian Army announced Wednesday that it had started a major offensive into Deir al-Zour in the general area of Sukhna.

The deal to relocate the ISIS fighters angered not only the coalition, but also Iraqi authorities, since their original intended destination had been the town of Abu Kamal, close to the Iraq border in Deir al-Zour province. Normally, Iraq has friendly relations with Syria and especially Hezbollah, a Shiite militia with close ties to Iraq’s powerful Shiite militias.

Hezbollah is a paramilitary political party based in Lebanon, whose pro-Iranian militants are actively fighting in Syria alongside the Bashar al-Assad regime. Its normally reclusive leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has made three public statements this week to defend the ISIS convoy deal.

“We transported those defeated militants from one front we fight in to another front we also fight in,” he said, referring to Hezbollah forces fighting in the Deir al-Zour area. “Those who have been transferred are not large in numbers; 310 defeated, broken fighters will not change anything in the equation of the battle in Deir al-Zour province, which is said to have tens of thousands of fighters.”</s>The U.S.-led coalition said Wednesday it carried out airstrikes to disrupt a convoy of Islamic State militants being evacuated from the Lebanon-Syria border to an IS-held area in eastern Syria near Iraq, without targeting the evacuees themselves.

Coalition aircraft struck a small bridge and cratered a road to hinder the convoy’s progress. The coalition also struck a separate group of IS militants traveling to meet the convoy, according to Col. Ryan Dillon, a coalition spokesman.

U.S. officials have criticized the transfer of hundreds of militants and civilians who are bound for an IS-held area near the Iraqi border, saying the extremists should be killed on the battlefield. The evacuation came as part of a controversial deal brokered by the Lebanese Hezbollah group to clear IS from an area along the Lebanon-Syria border.

The coalition is reluctant to strike the actual convoy of evacuees because the fighters have wives and children traveling with them, said a U.S. official, who wasn’t authorized to discuss military details and requested anonymity. Although Hezbollah members are believed to be the ones escorting the convoy, the Syrian government’s involvement creates further risk for the U.S. if the coalition were to hit it.

The coalition nevertheless said in a statement that it is not bound by the evacuation agreement. There are about 300 militants and almost as many family members on buses being evacuated under the deal.

“We are monitoring their location in real time,” Dillon said, adding that the coalition “will not rule out strikes against IS fighters being moved.”

He added that any strike will be in accordance with “the law of armed conflict and if we are able to do so and can discriminate and discern the difference between fighters and civilians.”

Syrian opposition activists said the convoy, which left the Lebanon-Syria border on Tuesday, is still in government-held territory in eastern Syria.

The evacuation agreement, the first such publicized deal, had already angered many Iraqis, who accused Syria and Lebanon’s Hezbollah of dumping the militants on the Iraqi border rather than eradicating them.

The top U.S. envoy for the international coalition against IS, Brett McGurk, tweeted Wednesday that IS “terrorists should be killed on the battlefield, not bused across #Syria to the Iraqi border without #Iraq’s consent.” McGurk added that the anti-IS coalition will help ensure that “these terrorists can never” enter Iraq.

Lebanese troops launched an attack against IS on Aug. 18, while Syrian troops and Hezbollah fighters launched a simultaneous offensive from the Syrian side of the border. The militants agreed to a cease-fire over the weekend once they had been squeezed into a small area along the frontier.

Lebanon has defended the agreement, in which the militants are said to have revealed the location of the remains of nine Lebanese soldiers who were captured in 2014.

The remains of several people have been uncovered in the border area, and DNA tests are underway to determine whether they belong to the missing soldiers. Lebanese officials say they are almost sure the remains are of the soldiers.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun declared victory against IS on Wednesday and praised the Lebanese army for carrying out the operation.

“Our only consolation is that we knew the fate of the soldiers,” he said. “We wish they were celebrating with us.”

Army commander Gen. Joseph Aoun, who is not related to the president, told reporters Wednesday that as the offensive against IS was underway, the Lebanese mediator called him to say that the extremists accepted a cease-fire in return for information about the fate of the soldiers.

“I had one of two choices. Either to go on with the battle and not know the fate of the soldiers or give in and know the fate of the soldiers,” Aoun said.

The Lebanese commander added that he cares most about the lives of his soldiers, and that one of the main achievements was to win the battle without taking further casualties.

In a separate incident, mines laid by the extremists killed at least nine people and wounded dozens who were fleeing IS-held areas in Syria’s eastern Deir el-Zour province, according to an opposition monitoring group and state media.

State news agency SANA said 10 people were killed and 28 wounded when the vehicles they were traveling in drove over mines. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said nine people were killed and many others wounded in the Abu Khashab area on the northern edge of Deir el-Zour province, a main stronghold for IS.

In Syria, meanwhile, President Bashar Assad received Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Jaberi Ansari. State media gave no further details. Iran has been one of Assad’s main backers since Syria’s conflict began in March 2011.</s>BEIRUT, Aug 31 (Reuters) - A stalled Islamic State evacuation convoy in eastern Syria will travel north to government-held Sukhna before crossing towards Deir al-Zor region, which is held by the jihadists, a commander in the pro-Syrian government military alliance said on Thursday.

Hezbollah and the Syrian army arranged the evacuation as part of a ceasefire with Islamic State in an enclave on the Lebanon-Syria border after their offensive against the area last week, coinciding with the Lebanese army assaulting the militants inside Lebanon.

But on Wednesday, the U.S.-led coalition blocked the convoy from moving into IS-held territory by striking the road ahead and some of their comrades travelling to meet them.

"We will continue to monitor the convoys in real time ... and take advantage of known ISIS (fighters) in open areas away from civilians and strike them," coalition spokesman Colonel Ryan Dillon said by phone on Thursday.

However, the commander said the location for the convoy to move into Islamic State territory had been changed and that part of the deal was already moving forward.

The evacuation deal allowed for a convoy of 600 individuals, almost half of which are civilians according to Hezbollah, to be transferred to IS-held territory in eastern Syria.

The deal also involved Islamic State revealing the fate of nine Lebanese soldiers it took captive in its border enclave in 2014, as well as surrendering a Hezbollah prisoner and bodies of pro-Assad alliance fighters, one of whom was an Iranian fighter.

An operation to exchange wounded Islamic State fighters in the convoy for the bodies of an Iranian soldier and two other soldiers in the pro-government alliance was also beginning, the commander said. (Reporting by Leila Bassam and Sarah Dadouch, writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Alison Williams)</s>On Wednesday, US presidential envoy to the US-led anti-Daesh coalition Brett McGurk blasted a deal between forces allied to Damascus and Daesh militants involving the busing of the terrorists and their families from western Qalamoun, along the border with Lebanon, to the province of Deir ez Zor in eastern Syria in exchange for information about Lebanese soldiers kidnapped by the terrorists in 2014.

"Irreconcilable #ISIS terrorists should be killed on the battlefield, not bused across #Syria to the Iraqi border without #Iraq's consent," McGurk wrote on his Twitter page. "Our @coalition will help ensure that these terrorists can never enter #Iraq or escape from what remains of their dwindling 'caliphate,'" he added.

Earlier this week, 308 militants and 331 members of their families began their journey by bus from the Syria-Lebanon border to the jihadist-controlled town of Abu Kamal in Deir ez Zor. In addition to clearing the border area, the deal, reached over the weekend, required Daesh to provide information about the kidnapped Lebanese troops, as well as information about missing Hezbollah fighters. The Lebanese side has received the bodies of eight soldiers; their identities are presently being confirmed by DNA analysis.

Hezbollah, the Lebanese army and the Syrian army launched an operation to clear the border area between Syria and Lebanon of terrorists earlier this month, clearing dozens of square kilometers and clinching the jihadists in several pockets. The deal made over the weekend provided for the withdrawal of the remaining terrorists and their families from the border area to eastern Syria.

"Our American partners understand that they have run out of time to seize the initiative in Syria, hence the need to attach themselves to some small issue and break the positive trends regarding the situation in this country," Yevstafeev said.

"[They're hoping to] latch on to any event, whoever it might involve, to regain the initiative, at least formally," the observer added.

"They've said that they reserve the right to bomb the column passing through territory controlled by Bashar Assad's troops in order to provoke, for instance, a reaction by the Russian air defenses in the country. Therefore, this is an attempt at a petty and cheap provocation. And this reflects the strategic situation: the Americans have lost in Syria," Yevstafeev stressed.

"Therefore, from the strategic, and the humanitarian points of view, the actions of Bashar Assad's allies are absolutely justified," Evstafiev concluded.</s>Jets carry out two sets of air raids to block ISIL evacuees from reaching area held by the group near Syria-Iraq border.

A US-led coalition battling ISIL says its fighter jets have blocked a convoy of the group's fighters evacuated from Lebanon from reaching eastern Syria, and also struck a number of their comrades travelling from the other direction to meet them.

The strikes on Wednesday were aimed at derailing a deal for fighters of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) to leave their enclave on the Lebanon border, along with their family members, for areas the armed group holds on Syria's eastern frontier with Iraq.

The evacuation deal, brokered by Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Syrian army, sparked a furious reaction from Iraq and the United States.

Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said moving hundreds of fighters towards the Iraqi border was "unacceptable" and "an insult to the Iraqi people", while US officials said ISIL fighters should be killed on the battlefield.

The first set of strikes on Wednesday took place east of Humeima in southeast Syria, said Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the coalition.

"To prevent the convoy from moving further east, we cratered the road and destroyed a small bridge," he told AFP news agency.

Dillon said the coalition understood there were civilians aboard the buses, and would only bomb the convoy if fighters could be separated from the civilians.

Describing ISIL as a "global threat", he said "relocating terrorists from one place to another for someone else to deal with is not a lasting solution".

Later, coalition fighter jets also bombed ISIL vehicles heading towards the convoy from the Syrian town of Albukamal.

The buses, which left the Lebanese-Syrian border two days ago, were now stuck in territory held by Syria'a government, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group monitoring the country's conflict via a network of contacts on the ground.

There were about 300 fighters and almost as many family members, including children, on the buses being evacuated, according to Hezbollah, which defended the evacuation deal saying it was the "only way" to find out the fate of nine Lebanese soldiers ISIL had kidnapped in 2014.

The deal also involved ISIL surrendering Hezbollah and Syrian army prisoners and bodies in east Syria.

Hezbollah had fought a week-long offensive against ISIL on the Syrian side of the border with Lebanon, coinciding with a simultaneous assault by Lebanese troops on their side of the frontier.

The battles ended on Sunday with the announcement of the evacuation deal.

ISIL is on the back foot in both Syria and Iraq, losing swathes of its territory and its most important towns and cities.

In Syria, the US-led coalition is backing an alliance of Kurdish and Arab armed groups in the north which are assaulting ISIL in the city of Raqqa.

The Russian-backed Syrian army and allied armed groups have meanwhile seized most of the central desert from ISIL, and are advancing eastwards to relieve the army's besieged enclave in Deir Az Zor.</s>BEIRUT (AP) - The Latest on the Syrian conflict and the war against the Islamic State group (all times local):

The U.S.-led coalition says it has struck an Islamic State convoy coming from militant-held territory in Syria to meet IS evacuees being transferred there under a controversial deal brokered by Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group.

In this photo released by Lebanon's official government photographer Dalati Nohra, Lebanese Army Commander Gen. Joseph Aoun, right, and Spanish Defense Minister Yacoub Sarraf, left, listen to Lebanese President Michel Aoun, speaking to journalists at the Presidential Palace in Baabda, east of Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2017. Aoun declared victory against the Islamic State group Wednesday in a live statement praising the Lebanese army for carrying out the operation that ended with the deal to evacuate IS fighters and their families in return for information about nine troops who were kidnapped by IS in August 2014. (Dalati Nohra via AP)

U.S. officials have criticized the transfer of hundreds of militants and civilians who are bound for an IS-held area near the Iraqi border, saying the extremists should be killed on the battlefield.

Col. Ryan Dillon says Wednesday's airstrike hit vehicles identified as belonging to IS that were traveling from IS-held territory toward the convoy.

Coalition officials say they are not bound by the evacuation agreement and may strike the evacuees themselves. An earlier coalition airstrike destroyed a small bridge and cratered a road, hindering the movement of the evacuees.

There are about 300 militants and almost as many family members on buses being evacuated under the deal, which ended the IS presence along the Lebanon-Syria border.

A U.S. official says the coalition is monitoring a convoy of Islamic State fighters who were evacuated from the Lebanon-Syria border toward an area near Iraq under a controversial agreement and may strike the militants.

Col. Ryan Dillan, a spokesman for the U.S.-led alliance against the militants, says "we are monitoring their location in real time." He says the coalition "will not rule out strikes against IS fighters being moved."

He says the coalition has already bombed a small bridge to obstruct the convoy.

Syrian opposition activists say the convoy, which left the Lebanon-Syria border on Tuesday, is still in government-controlled territory in eastern Syria.

The IS militants were allowed to evacuate in buses following a Hezbollah-negotiated deal that allows them to go to IS-held territory near the Iraqi border.

Dillan said "we are not party to any agreements that were made by the Lebanese Hezbollah and ISIS or the (Syrian) regime." ISIS is another acronym for the Islamic State group.

A U.S. official has blasted a deal that led to the evacuation of hundreds of Islamic State group fighters and civilians from the Lebanon-Syria border to areas close to Iraq, saying the extremists should be killed on the battlefield.

The evacuation agreement, the first such publicized deal, had already angered many Iraqis who accused Syria and Lebanon's Hezbollah of dumping the militants on the Iraqi border rather than eradicating them.

The top U.S. envoy for the international coalition against IS, Brett McGurk, tweeted on Wednesday that it is "irreconcilable" that IS "terrorists should be killed on the battlefield, not bused across #Syria to the Iraqi border without #Iraq's consent."

McGurk added that the anti-IS coalition will help ensure that "these terrorists can never" enter Iraq.
CJTF–OIR jets destroy a section of road, blocking the path of a convoy carrying ISIL evacuees from the Lebanon–Syria border en route to Abu Kamal in the Deir ez-Zor Governorate. The convoy, carrying 308 militants and 331 civilians according to Hezbollah, is now effectively stranded in Syrian government-controlled territory.