MILITARY/TERRORISM/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The U.S. military on Wednesday [8-30-17] carried out an airstrike to stop hundreds of Islamic State militants evacuated from the Lebanese-Syrian border from relocating to an extremist stronghold in Syria near the border with Iraq.
The airstrike came shortly after the U.S. criticized a deal brokered by the Lebanese militia Hezbollah that allowed hundreds of Islamic State militants to evacuate from an area straddling Syria’s southwestern border with Lebanon.
The fighters, traveling with their families, left on Monday for an area of eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzour province very close to the Iraqi border.
‘We created a crater. It was to block them so they could not continue on the road,’ a U.S. defense official said on Wednesday.”
-Nancy A. Youssef and Margherita Stancati, “U.S. Uses Airstrike to Block Relocation of ISIS Fighters From Lebanese-Syrian Border,” The Wall Street Journal online, Aug. 30, 2017 10:27am