BEIRUT: The US-led coalition on Wednesday struck buses transporting Daesh fighters who were evacuated from the Lebanese-Syrian border to eastern Syria, said coalition spokesman Col. Ryan Dillon.
AFP quoted Dillon as saying the raid was carried out “to prevent the convoy from moving further east; we punched a crater in the road and destroyed a small bridge.”
The raid comes amid anger in Iraq over the evacuation deal between Daesh and Hezbollah, under which Daesh fighters are being transported to Syria’s Deir Ezzor province, which borders Iraq.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi said: “This agreement is unacceptable, as we are fighting the terrorist group inside Iraq.” The deal is an “insult to the Iraqi people,” he added.
This sentiment was echoed by Dillon, who said: “Relocating terrorists from one place to another for someone else to deal with is not a lasting solution.”
Daesh and Hezbollah had agreed that upon the arrival of the convoy in Deir Ezzor, which is under Daesh control, the terrorist group would free Ahmed Mounir Maatouq, a hostage from Hezbollah, and hand over the bodies of two Hezbollah fighters and Iranian Hassan Hajji.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah responded to the Iraqi condemnation by saying the agreement “was to transfer a number of Daesh fighters and their families from Syrian territories to Syrian territories, not to Iraq.”
Nasrallah added: “They are 310 defeated and conquered militants. We moved them from a battlefront we are fighting in, to another front we are also fighting in.”
Hours before the coalition raid, Lebanon’s president and military declared victory against Daesh in Operation Barrens’ Dawn.
Address the Lebanese people and announcing the end of the operation, President Michel Aoun said: “The army proved to be strong as it is the only military force that defeated Daesh, and what distinguished this battle is the high level of professionalism. Do not allow political bickering to make you forget this victory.”
After his meeting with the president, Army Commander Gen. Joseph Aoun told reporters: “We besieged the terrorists from three sides, and we did not let them know where they were attacked from. The element of surprise led to their collapse. We did not arrest anyone because they were either killed or fled to Syrian territories.”
Asked why Daesh fighters were allowed to withdraw instead of being arrested, the commander replied: “We had the chance to win the battle without going on with it until the end, and this a great achievement for us.”
Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of US Central Command, on Wednesday congratulated the Lebanese military on the operation’s success.
The Lebanese National News Agency quoted Votel as saying the US will keep supporting the Lebanese Army with weapons and equipment to develop and strengthen its capabilities.
Gen. Aoun told Votel: “American aid to the army had actively contributed to the success of the operation.”
US-led coalition strikes convoy of Daesh evacuees from Lebanon
US-led coalition strikes convoy of Daesh evacuees from Lebanon
Battered by Gaza war, Israel’s tech sector in recovery mode
- “High-tech companies had to overcome massive staffing cuts, because 15 to 20 percent of employees, and sometimes more, were called up” to the front as reservists, IIA director Dror Bin told
JERUSALEM: Israel’s vital tech sector, dragged down by the war in Gaza, is showing early signs of recovery, buoyed by a surge in defense innovation and fresh investment momentum.
Cutting-edge technologies represent 17 percent of the country’s GDP, 11.5 percent of jobs and 57 percent of exports, according to the latest available data from the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA), published in September 2025.
But like the rest of the economy, the sector was not spared the knock-on effects of the war, which began in October 2023 and led to staffing shortages and skittishness from would-be backers.
Now, with a ceasefire largely holding in Gaza since October, Israel’s appeal is gradually returning, as illustrated in mid-December, when US chip giant Nvidia announced it would create a massive research and development center in the north that could host up to 10,000 employees.
“Investors are coming to Israel nonstop,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the time.
After the war, the recovery can’t come soon enough.
“High-tech companies had to overcome massive staffing cuts, because 15 to 20 percent of employees, and sometimes more, were called up” to the front as reservists, IIA director Dror Bin told AFP.
To make matters worse, in late 2023 and 2024, “air traffic, a crucial element of this globalized sector, was suspended, and foreign investors froze everything while waiting to see what would happen,” he added.
The war also sparked a brain drain in Israel.
Between October 2023 and July 2024, about 8,300 employees in advanced technologies left the country for a year or more, according to an IIA report published in April 2025.
The figure represents around 2.1 percent of the sector’s workforce.
The report did not specify how many employees left Israel to work for foreign companies versus Israeli firms based abroad, or how many have since returned to Israel.
- Rise in defense startups -
In 2023, the tech sector far outpaced GDP growth, increasing by 13.7 percent compared to 1.8 percent for GDP.
But the sector’s output stagnated in 2024 and 2025, according to IIA figures.
Industry professionals now believe the industry is turning a corner.
Israeli high-tech companies raised $15.6 billion in private funding in 2025, up from $12.2 billion in 2024, according to preliminary figures published in December by Startup Nation Central (SNC), a non-profit organization that promotes Israeli innovation.
Deep tech — innovation based on major scientific or engineering advances such as artificial intelligence, biotech and quantum computing — returned in 2025 to its pre-2021 levels, according to the IIA.
The year 2021 is considered a historic peak for Israeli tech.
The past two years have also seen a surge in Israeli defense technologies, with the military engaged on several fronts from Lebanon and Syria to Iran, Yemen, Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Between July 2024 and April 2025, the number of startups in the defense sector nearly doubled, from 160 to 312, according to SNC.
Of the more than 300 emerging companies collaborating with the research and development department of Israel’s defense ministry, “over 130 joined our operations during the war,” Director General Amir Baram said in December.
Until then, the ministry had primarily sourced from Israel’s large defense firms, said Menahem Landau, head of Caveret Ventures, a defense tech investment company.
But he said the war pushed the ministry “to accept products that were not necessarily fully finished and tested, coming from startups.”
“Defense-related technologies have replaced cybersecurity as the most in-demand high-tech sector,” the reserve lieutenant colonel explained.
“Not only in Israel but worldwide, due to the war between Russia and Ukraine and tensions with China.”
