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Stranded by US airstrikes, IS fighters fleeing Lebanon retreat to Syria

The Pentagon says it will leave the militants alone if they don't try to link up with Islamic State forces on the Iraqi border.
An Islamic State flag flies over the custom office of Syria's Jarablus border gate as it is pictured from the Turkish town of Karkamis, in Gaziantep province, Turkey August 1, 2015. Karkamis is a Turkish town of 10,500 people that sits directly opposite the border post. Shut for more than a year, the military sealed the crossing with a breeze block wall a few months ago. Behind it, just inside Syria, the black flag of Islamic State flaps in the breeze. Karkamis lies on the northeastern edge of a rectangle o

A group of about 300 Islamic State (IS) fighters halted by US airstrikes on Wednesday after retreating from the Lebanese border is heading back into the heart of territory controlled by President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, US military officials said today.

The militants were released by the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah on Tuesday in exchange for the bodies of Lebanese soldiers and Hezbollah fighters captured by the group. They had been traveling toward the IS-controlled Deir ez-Zor province, where they had hoped to link up with IS fighters in Iraq. The US-led coalition fighting the group in Syria interrupted those plans Wednesday, cratering the road toward the battlefront with airstrikes.

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