Defeat of ISIS looms as hundreds leave last area in Syria

The exodus came three days after the U.S.-backed forces resumed their push on ISIS fighters.

By Associated Press

Hundreds of people left the last area held by the Islamic State group in eastern Syria on Tuesday where they gathered in a massive reception area to be searched and screened by U.S.-backed fighters.

Some of those who gathered outside the village of Baghouz said they had been waiting since the previous night when hundreds left the ISIS-held pocket. The latest wave of evacuations brings the final defeat of the extremists’ so-called “caliphate” at the hands of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) closer.

Officers from the U.S.-led coalition were seen screening the men who had left the ISIS-held area to determine if they were terrorists or civilians.

The exodus came three days after the U.S.-backed forces resumed their push on ISIS fighters holed up in Baghouz on the banks of the Euphrates River, close to the Iraqi border.

In past weeks, thousands of civilians left the speck of territory in organized evacuations following an earlier halt in fighting. The Kurdish-led forces said their fighters were surprised by the large number of civilians, including ISIS family members, cooped up in the tiny area squeezed smaller and smaller by intermittent offensives.

U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces move women and children into a truck after being evacuated out of the last territory held by Islamic State militants, outside Baghouz, Syria, Monday, March 4, 2019. (AP/Andrea Rosa)

The U.S.-backed forces slowed their push on Baghouz last week to allow civilians to leave the tiny enclave.

Asked about the situation inside Baghouz, a Russian woman who came out with her three children responded in broken Arabic: “Fear.” She said her husband had died earlier.

Another woman in her mid-20s who identified herself as Reem from the central Syrian province of Hama, said she was waiting for her husband to come out of an ISIS-controlled jail. He has been there for months after killing an ISIS member in retaliation “for his baby daughter being killed in an airstrike,” she said.

“I haven’t seen him since and don’t know where he is,” Reem said, adding that she asked repeatedly for his whereabouts before she eventually decided to leave.

The evacuees said the bombing was intense over the past days. One woman said she saw a man hit by a missile as she was escaping from one tent to another.

Another woman said many are waiting to leave and that the scene is chaotic at the safe passage area.

Earlier on Tuesday, SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali, tweeted that about 3,000 people came out of Baghouz on Monday. They left through a humanitarian corridor established by the Kurdish-led forces for those who want to leave or surrender.

Since Feb. 20, more than 10,000 people have left the ISIS pocket, often in dramatic scenes of black-robed women with children in the back of trucks passing through the corridor and heading into the desert. They were then whisked off to a camp for displaced people to the north, while suspected ISIS fighters were moved to detention facilities.

Retaking the last ISIS-held enclave in Baghouz would be a milestone in the devastating four-year campaign to end the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate that once covered a vast territory straddling both Syria and Iraq.

Bali said a large number among those who left Monday were ISIS terrorists who “surrendered to our forces.”

It is unclear how many ISIS terrorists and civilians remain inside, but the number is now likely in the hundreds.

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