by Hummam Sheikh Ali
QARA, Syria, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) -- Livid with shock, Islamic State (IS) militants were bused out of western Qalamoun region for the first time under the camera eyes of foreign and local media outlets.
It was the first time for journalists to lay an eye, in real time, on the faces of the terror-designated militants, who placed a precondition of being evacuated far from the cameras.
But the curiosity of the reporters, who gathered at the Syrian barrens of Qara in Qalamoun early in the morning, was much stronger than the soldiers' orders to keep a distance while the evacuation was taking place overnight Monday.
A chapter of the battle against IS in Syria has been closed in Qalamoun, a rugged terrain constituting of several towns and barren areas entwined with the Lebanese territories, following a massive assault by the Syrian army and its strong allies of Hezbollah.
After losing key ground in the battle that had dragged on since Aug. 18, the IS militants buckled under the relentless shelling and attacks on their positions in Qara badlands and they had no choice but to give way to this kind of pressure in that border region between Syria and Lebanon.
There had been instances before when undisclosed number of IS militants were evacuated from the Yarmouk camp south of the capital Damascus.
But Monday's evacuation was different as it was the first time for the terror group to leave in a way akin to other rebel groups, which have evacuated from different parts of the key cities of Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo.
When the wings of night spread on Monday, after the hours-long delay, the flashing red lights of ambulances, spearheading the convoy of the buses, sliced through the darkness and blazed on the long road between the gathering point and the road where journalists were waiting. Moments after, the buses' headlights swept up the road out of Qara.
When the convoy was rapidly approaching, the flashlights of cameras shone on the shadowy faces of the IS militants inside the buses, showing some flinty and blankly inscrutable faces, some were white with shock, while others expressionless like they were set in stone.
Most of the buses' curtains were drawn, but some others were not.
Families of the IS militants were with them in the evacuation, with some women cupping their faces with their hands to avoid being filmed.
The men who appeared inside the buses seemed like time-travelers from the medieval ages, some of them peered out of the windows, their looks felt primitive and uncanny. Some wore their black hair long, complementing their long beards.
One Hezbollah fighter at the time mounted a vehicle and stretched wide the yellow and green flag of the Lebanese group, as a sign of victory.
Crackles of celebratory gunfire later reverberated across Qara as the buses were out on their way toward the eastern city of Bukamal in the Deir al-Zour province, to which the IS requested to be evacuated.
During the process, a total of 16 buses carrying the IS militants and their families left the barrens of Qara in western Qalamoun.
The evacuated also included 112 family members of IS who were brought from Lebanon's Arsal to join their relatives from IS in the evacuation, as the battle in Syria was synchronized with a battle fought by the Lebanese army against IS in the barrens of al-Qaa on the Lebanese side of the borders.
Meanwhile, 25 wounded members were also transported by Syrian Arab Red Crescent to nearby hospitals in Qara for quick treatment before returning to the assembly point of the evacuees to leave Qara.
As part of the evacuation deal, signed between Hezbollah and IS, the terror group divulged the fate of Lebanese soldiers kidnapped in 2014. Unfortunately, it turned out that the Lebanese soldiers had been killed by IS.
