According to the Hezbollah media wing in Syria, a majority of the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) fighters and their families will be evacuated from Arsal in Lebanon to the Syrian province of Idlib today.
The civilians and fighters will be evacuated from two areas:
- under the control of the Lebanese Army;
- outside the control of the Lebanese Army.
According to the report, the number of fighters in the first area is 116 and the number of civilians is 6101. 1000 fighters and 560 civilians will be evacuated from the second area. This batch is expected to arrive to Idlib today incase everything went as planned.
Yesterday, HTS handed over 3 Hezbollah fighters that had been captured in the last battle to the Lebanese General Security Forces. The Lebanese authorities released 3 suspects close to HTS from the Roumieh prison.
Major General Abbas Ibrahim, General Director of the General Directorate of Lebanese General Securit, has previously announced that the Arsal agreement doesn’t include the release or evacuation of any terrorist from the Palestinian Ayn al-Hilweh camp. He also revealed that some parties tried to add this as a condition to the agreement but this condition was rejected.
Lebanese sources confirm that Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army are preparing to launch a large-scale operation against ISIS on the Syrian-Lebanese border once the Arsal agreement is completed. The sources also confirmed that the Lebanese Army will play a bigger role in the next operation.
