French President Emmanuel Macron emphasized Friday that France will continue to stand by Lebanon following talks in Paris with Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

A convoy loaded with Islamic State fighters evacuated from the Lebanon-Syria border region was headed back into deep Syria on Thursday after being blocked at the Iraq border, a top U.S. general said.

Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, commander of the counter-IS coalition in Iraq and Syria, said the convoy of buses and vans carrying hundreds of fighters but also women and children had turned around after being restocked with food and water from forces allied with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Islamic State militants and their families began leaving a border area between Lebanon and Syria on Monday as part of a controversial negotiated deal with the extremist group to end its presence there, Lebanese and Syrian media reported.

The remains of eight Lebanese soldiers kidnapped by the Islamic State group three years ago were located Sunday, a senior Lebanese official said, in a negotiated deal that followed a military offensive to drive the militants out of the border area with Syria.

Major General Abbas Ibrahim, the chief of Lebanese General Security, said seven bodies buried in Lebanon near the border with Syria were removed while the body of slain soldier Abbas Medlej was yet to be located. He said the fate of a ninth soldier remained unknown amid reports that he had defected to the Islamic State group.

Lebanese security forces on Sunday found six bodies “likely” belonging to Lebanese troops abducted by the Islamic State group in 2014, General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim announced.

France said Wednesday it wants the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon to stick to its current mandate, opposing U.S. calls to strengthen the force's authority to deal with arms movements by Hizbullah.

The Lebanese army announced Tuesday that it has launched the third phase of a broad offensive to capture areas controlled by the terrorist Islamic State group on the border with Syria.

A bomb exploded early on Monday at the southern Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Hilweh, breaching a ceasefire agreement reached a day earlier, as clashes resumed between the secular Fatah Movement and members of two small Islamist groups.

The intersection at the vegetable market-al-Tiri in al-Fawqani street witnessed sniper shooting and bomb explosions, added the agency.

The Lebanese army heavily pounded the hideouts of the Islamic State posts for the third day in a row, as it scored advances in the outskirts of Ras Baalbek and al-Qaa, media reports said on Monday.

The troops have intensified their operations primarily following an attempted suicide attack Sunday that aimed to target their positions on Lebanon's eastern border where the battle rages.

Speaker Nabih Berri hailed on Monday the army's endeavors to eliminate the Islamic State group jihadists from Lebanon, praising the military forces as “heroic and patriotic,” al-Joumhouria daily reported.

“Military troops are doing a heroic and patriotic work. They are achieving great accomplishments,” Berri told his visitors said the daily.