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US targets Islamic State fighters leaving Lebanon after cease-fire

US airstrikes blocked the militants’ route to the Syrian war zone of Deir ez-Zor near the border with Iraq.
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 - RTX3DQF7

US-led forces today bombed the route traveled by Islamic State (IS) fighters withdrawing from the Lebanese border under a cease-fire deal with Hezbollah, leaving them stranded in territory controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

Some 300 fighters and their families were being bused to Syria’s IS-controlled Deir ez-Zor province near the border with Iraq under the agreement reached earlier this week. The airstrikes took out a small bridge and cratered the road through Syria, while also taking out another group of IS fighters on their way to meet the convoy.

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