BEIRUT (AP) – More than a hundred buses carrying thousands of al-Qaida-linked fighters and Syrian refugees drove down a dirt road from Lebanon into Syria on Wednesday, in what was the last phase of an exchange deal between Syria’s al-Qaida branch and Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group.
The departure of al-Qaida fighters from the Lebanon-Syria border comes three years to the day its fighters stormed the Lebanese border town of Arsal and captured two dozen soldiers, killing some in captivity and releasing others. The group’s presence in Lebanon has left scores of people dead.
More than 7,000 Syrian refugees and gunmen, including a top al-Qaida operative in Syria known as Abu Malek al-Talli, were aboard the 113 buses the left Lebanon’s Arsal region toward the Syrian border village of Fleeta, according to the government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media.
The militants and civilians final destination will be the jihadi-held part of northwestern Syria, according to an agreement between Lebanon, Syria, Hezbollah, and Syria’s al-Qaida affiliate. That group is known as the Hay’at Tahrir al Sham militant alliance – Arabic for the Levant Liberation Committee – or HTS.
“The Nusra Front was defeated in Lebanon,” said the announcer of Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV, using the old name of al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria.