An exchange deal between Hizbullah and the Syrian al-Qaida affiliate al-Nusra Front was finalized overnight on Wednesday with the release of three Hizbullah fighters in return for three Syrian Nusra prisoners, the National News Agency reported.
NNA said the swap took place in the Wadi Hmayyed area in the outskirts of Lebanon’s border town of Arsal.
Three Nusra prisoners from Roumieh prison -four non-convicts and a fifth who has finished his jail term- were swapped for Hizbullah captives.
General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, who is playing a key role in the negotiations, assured that all three Hizbullah fighters were in good health.
Hizbullah captives were kidnapped when they lost their way during the ceasefire between Hizbullah and Nusra during the battles in Arsal’s outskirts last month.
They were identified as Mahmoud Harb, Hussam Fakih and Hafez Zakhim, NNA added.
The National News Agency later said that a convoy of buses, transporting around 7800 militants from al-Nusra and their families from Arsal’s outskirts, began their journey Wednesday morning into Syria’s Flita as part of a transfer deal.
It added that Nusra Front’s leader in the Syrian Qalamoun mountain region Abu Malek al-Talli was among the evacuees.
Lebanon’s General Security, the Lebanese army, the International Red Cross and international bodies supervised the transfer process, in accordance with the implementation of the second phase of negotiations after the completion of the exchange process which took place at one o’clock on Wednesday, said NNA.
Part of the deal also includes the release of another five Hizbullah captives -captured in Aleppo in 2015- as soon as the convoy of buses arrives at a crossing that had also witnessed a deal to liberate civilians from the Syrian towns of Kefraya and al-Fouaa.
On Tuesday, the evacuation ran into some hurdles and the process was postponed to Wednesday, media reports had said.
They said that conditions set by al-Nusra Front group related to the release of around 20 Nusra inmates from the Roumieh Prison have reportedly hampered the exchange deal.
The second round of the exchange was supposed to take place on Monday with the evacuation of Nusra’s militants and their families from Arsal’s outskirts to north Syria. It was reported that the process was suspended after al-Nusra “insisted on taking the three (Hizbullah) captives who are in its custody in Arsal’s outskirts to areas inside Syria in order to release them there.”
Hizbullah and Ibrahim “rejected this condition, with Maj. Gen. Ibrahim telling Nusra that it is prohibited for the convoys to head to Syria while Hizbullah’s captives are still in its custody,” MTV had said.
The exchange and evacuation deal comes in the wake of a military offensive by Hizbullah fighters and Syrian troops during which they captured border areas between the two countries and left hundreds of Nusra fighters besieged in a small rugged mountainous area.
The fighting ended with a ceasefire on Thursday.
