Qalamoun offensive

A cease-fire took effect on Aug. 27 in an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) enclave straddling the Syria-Lebanon border, where the militants have been fighting the Lebanese army on one front and Hezbollah with Syrian troops on the other.

The Lebanese army announced that a cease-fire in its own offensive took effect at 7 a.m. but did not mention Syria's side of the frontier.

 The Lebanese army said it was not coordinating with Hezbollah or the Syrian army in an operation it launched on Saturday against Islamic State militants at the northeastern frontier with Syria, Reuters reported.

Fighters from Saraya Ahl al-Sham, a Syrian rebel group, will start on Aug. 12 to pull out of an enclave in Lebanon on the border with Syria along with some civilians, the head of Lebanon's General Security said on Aug. 11.

A cease-fire deal has been reached that will see jihadist fighters withdraw from the Syria-Lebanon border, a top Lebanese official said July 27 after a week-long operation there by the Hezbollah movement.

Lebanon's Hezbollah group said on July 21 that its fighters had begun an operation against militants on both sides of the country's border with Syria.

The operation has been anticipated for several weeks, and comes after Lebanese soldiers carrying out raids on Syrian refugee camps in the area were met with suicide bombings and a grenade attack.

Syrian government forces backed by Lebanon's Hezbollah movement on July 5 entered Zabadani, the last rebel-held town in the Qalamun region on the Lebanese border, state media said.

The Syrian army and its allied militia launched a major assault on the rebel-held Syrian city of Zabadani on July 4, Lebanese group Hezbollah's television station said. 

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters killed dozens in an attack on Syrian army-held areas in Homs province overnight, an organisation monitoring the war said, as the group intensifies efforts to expand beyond its strongholds.