A U.S.-led airstrike has been carried out in order to prevent Islamic State jihadists fleeing Lebanon from entering eastern Syria, coalition officials said.

Monday, hundreds of IS fighters fled the border region between Lebanon and Syria as part of a cease-fire deal and were making their way to an IS-held town near the Iraqi border when they were confronted by U.S. air power.

A coalition statement said the airstrike blocked the IS convoy’s route by cratering a road and destroying a small bridge, but did not specify a location of the engagement.

“ISIS is a global threat; relocating terrorists from one place to another for someone else to deal with is not a lasting solution,” the statement said, using an alternate acronym for IS.

U.S. presidential envoy to the anti-IS coalition Brett McGurk wrote on Twitter the “terrorists should be killed on the battlefield” and not transported across Syria to be relocated to Iraq.

“Our coalition will help ensure that these terrorists can never enter Iraq or escape from what remains of their dwindling ‘caliphate’,” he wrote.

The coalition said it is monitoring the convoy in real-time and it would not rule out direct strikes on IS jihadists.  Its statement added it is “not party to any agreements that were made by the Lebanese Hezbollah and ISIS or the [Syrian] regime,” noting that any strikes carried out against the IS convoy would be in accordance with “the law of armed conflict.”
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