U.S. Delivers Airstrike to Block Relocation of ISIS Fighters From Lebanese-Syrian Border In deal with Hezbollah, ISIS fighters, families were moving to area close to Iraq By Nancy A. Youssef in Washington and Margherita Stancati in Beirut
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-uses-airstrike-to-block-relocation-of-isis-fighters-from-lebanese-syrian-border-1504103225
The U.S. military on Wednesday carried out two airstrikes aimed at stopping hundreds of Islamic State militants evacuated from the Lebanese-Syrian border from relocating to an extremist stronghold in Syria near the border with Iraq.
The first of the airstrikes came shortly after the U.S. criticized a deal brokered by the Lebanese militia Hezbollah that allowed hundreds of Islamic State militants and their families free passage out of an area straddling Syria’s southwestern border with Lebanon. Their convoy left Monday and was headed to a part of eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzour province very close to the border with U.S. ally Iraq.
“We created a crater. It was to block them so they could not continue on the road,” a U.S. defense official said on Wednesday, adding the coalition didn’t strike the buses because family members were present.
That airstrike, which also destroyed a bridge, took place after the convoy entered Deir Ezzour province, one of Islamic State’s last strongholds in Syria, from territory controlled by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
U.S. Central Command said that within two hours of the first strike, it conducted a separate but related second strike west of Deir Ezzour on a handful of logistical vehicles that were known to be affiliated to Islamic State. That strike may have killed Islamic State fighters, the U.S. military said.
“Irreconcilable #ISIS terrorists should be killed on the battlefield, not bused across #Syria to the Iraqi border without #Iraq’s consent,” Brett McGurk, U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy for combating Islamic State, tweeted ahead of the airstrike. “Our @coalition will help ensure that these terrorists can never enter #Iraq or escape from what remains of their dwindling ‘caliphate.’”
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi also criticized the Hezbollah deal.
“We consider it an insult to the Iraqi people. Moving this number of terrorists for such a long distance through Syria is unacceptable,” Mr. Abadi told reporters on Tuesday night. “We are fighting terrorism in Iraq and we are killing them in Iraq. We don’t send them to Syria.” CONTINUE AT SITE
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