US-led coalition still monitors ISIL convoy in Syria

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A convoy of ISIL fighters and their families being evacuated into jihadist territory in east Syria remained in government-held areas of Syria on Friday, US-led forces said.

“It has not managed to link up with any other ISIL elements in eastern Syria,” said Colonel Ryan Dillon, spokesman for the US-led coalition fighting ISIL.

There are about 300 fighters and 300 civilians in the convoy, which the Syrian army and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group granted safe passage after the jihadists surrendered their enclave on Syria’s border with Lebanon.

A convoy of ISIL fighters and their families begin to depart from the Lebanon-Syria border zone in Qalamoun, Syria, Aug. 28, 2017. /Reuters Photo

But the coalition against ISIL has used air strikes to block the convoy from crossing into the group’s main territory straddling Syria’s eastern border with Iraq.

The ISIL fighters in the border pocket accepted a truce and evacuation deal after simultaneous but separate offensives by the Lebanese army on one front and the Syrian army and Hezbollah on the other.

It angered both the coalition, which does not want the fighters bussed to a battlefront in which it is active, and Iraq, which is fighting ISIL across the border.

“We are continuing to monitor that convoy and will continue to disrupt its movement east to link up with any other ISIL element and we will continue to strike any other ISIL elements that try to move toward it,” Dillon said.

File photo shows US army vehicles drive north of Manbij City in Syria. /Reuters Photo

The coalition has asked Russia to tell the Syrian government that it will not allow the convoy to move further east to the Iraqi border, the coalition said in a statement.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gave prayers on Friday for Islam's Eid al-Adha festival in the town of Qara, near the enclave surrendered on Monday by the ISIL fighters.

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

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (2nd-L) attends prayers to mark Eid al-Fitr, the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, at al-Nuri Mosque in the central province of Hama, photo released by state media SANA on June 25, 2017. /AFP Photo

The departure of ISIL and other groups from the Western Qalamoun district means the border with Lebanon is Syria’s first to be controlled entirely by its army since early in the conflict.

Qara is only a few miles from the mountains delineating the frontier with Lebanon, in which ISIL and other militant groups held territory until August.

Part of an agreed exchange under the truce went ahead on Thursday as wounded ISIL fighters were swapped for the bodies of pro-government forces. But the fate of the main part of the convoy is uncertain.

“It was moving this morning and then they had stopped.... I don’t know if they stopped for a break or were trying to figure out what to do,” Dillon said.

The frontline between Syrian government forces and ISIL in eastern Syria is active, as the army, aided by Russian jets and Iran-backed Shi‘ite militias, presses an offensive to relieve its besieged enclave at Deir al-Zor.

On Friday, a Syrian military source said the army and its allies had made an advance against ISIL in that area and had also taken several villages in a jihadist enclave in central Syria.

Source(s): Reuters