Civilians, Jihadi fighters evacuated from last Islamic State holdout in Syria

2019-02-20 00:00:00 - Source: Iraq News

A veiled woman looks back at Al-Hol camp in northeast Syria where civilians from Baghouz, the last holdout of the Islamic State group are being evacuated, February 2019. Photo: AFP

BAGHOUZ, Syria,— A convoy of trucks carrying hundreds of civilians, including men, women and children, left the last enclave held by Islamic State militants in eastern Syria on Wednesday, signaling a possible end to a standoff that has lasted for more than a week.

An Associated Press team in Baghouz, a village near the Iraqi border where the Islamic State group is making its final stand, counted at least 17 trucks that emerged through a humanitarian corridor used in past weeks to evacuate people from the militants’ last patch of territory along the Euphrates River.

Women, children and men, some with checkered headscarves, or keffiyehs, could be seen through a flap opening on the flatbed trucks. One man carried a crutch; the women were engulfed in conservative black garments covering their faces known as niqabs.

Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, the U.S.-backed militia spearheading the fight against IS in Syria, confirmed the trucks were carrying civilians out of the enclave.

It was not immediately clear if IS militants were also on board the trucks. Around 300 militants are believed to be holed up in the enclave, along with several hundred civilians. On Tuesday, Bali said a military operation aimed at ousting the extremists from the area will begin if they don’t surrender, adding that such an operation would take place after separating or evacuating the civilians from the militants.

“Dozens of civilians and some fighters have handed themselves over”, SDF spokesman Adnan Afrin told reporters at the nearby Al-Omar oil field on Tuesday.

He said a convoy of trucks had entered Baghouz on Tuesday to transfer jihadists and their relatives out to SDF-held territory.

A Kurdish SDF commander, Zana Amedi, said most of the militants remaining inside the enclave are seriously wounded or sick.

The Islamic State group has been reduced from its self-proclaimed “caliphate” that once spread across much of Syria and Iraq at its height in 2014 to a speck of land on the countries’ shared border.

The SDF has been encircling the remaining IS-held territory for days, waiting to declare the territorial defeat of the extremist group.

Nearly 20,000 civilians had left the shrinking area in recent weeks before the evacuation halted last week when the militants closed all the roads out of the tiny area.

The United Nations earlier expressed concern over “the situation of some 200 families, including many women and children, who are reportedly trapped” in the IS holdout.

“Many of them are apparently being actively prevented from leaving by ISIL,” it said in a statement, using another acronym for IS.

The Kurdish-led SDF spokesman Adnan Afrin said the “offensive has not stopped” but the SDF have slowed their advance to protect civilians, “who are now on the frontlines”.

“The positions we are storming are the ones where we have detected activity by IS fighters,” he told AFP.

“But there are positions where we can’t advance or even strike because civilians are among the fighters,” he said.

Earlier Tuesday, another SDF spokesman Mustefa Bali said his forces were preparing for a final push.

“We are working on secluding and evacuating civilians and then we will attack. This could happen soon,” he said.

IS fighters “have only two options, either they surrender or they will be killed in battle,” Bali said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported ongoing negotiations between the SDF and jihadists, who are allegedly demanding safe passage out of the Baghouz pocket.

But SDF officials denied any negotiations are taking place.

Washington has for years supported the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria, as part of an international anti-jihadist coalition dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). But U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly announced the pullout from Syria.

The Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD and its powerful military wing YPG/YPJ, considered the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and U.S. has provided them with arms. The YPG, which is the backbone of the SDF forces, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.

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