Islamic State faces final territorial defeat in eastern Syria battle

[March 02, 2019]  By Ellen Francis

OUTSKIRTS OF BAGHOUZ, Syria (Reuters) - Islamic State faces final territorial defeat as the U.S.-backed Syrian force battling the jihadists said on Saturday it was closing in on the jihadists' last bastion near the Iraqi border, capping four years of efforts to roll back the group.

While the fall of Baghouz, an eastern Syrian village on the bank of the Euphrates River, would mark a milestone in a global campaign against Islamic State (IS), they remain a threat, using guerrilla tactics and holding some desolate land further west.

An array of enemies, both local and international, confronted IS after it declared a modern-day "caliphate" in 2014 across large swathes of territory it had seized in lightning offensives in Syria and neighboring Iraq.

Thousands of IS fighters, followers and civilians, who had retreated to Baghouz as the group was gradually driven out of those lands, have poured out of the tiny cluster of hamlets and farmlands in Deir al-Zor province over the last few weeks.

Their evacuation held up the final assault until Friday evening when the SDF said it had advanced and would not stop until the jihadists were defeated.

"We expect it to be over soon," Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), told Reuters shortly after sunrise. He said the SDF were advancing on two fronts using medium and heavy weaponry.

IS responded with drones and rockets, and seven SDF fighters have been wounded so far, said commander Adnan Afrin.

The SDF has previously estimated several hundred IS insurgents - believed mostly to be foreigners - to be still in Baghouz, and the U.S.-led international coalition has described them as the "most hardened" militants.

The SDF's final advance was slowed for weeks by the jihadists' extensive use of tunnels and human shields. It has not ruled out the possibility that some militants have crept out, hidden among civilians.

"COMPLICATED SITUATION"

When reporters arrived at the village outskirts around midday, columns of smoke could be seen rising from inside but the scene appeared calm. Warplanes hovered in the sky, but no air strikes were observed.

A militant Islamist fighter waving a flag, cheers as he takes part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province June 30, 2014. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo

A spokesman for the coalition, which supports the Kurdish-led SDF, said it was too early to assess the battle's progress "as it is a complicated situation with many variables".

The SDF commander-in-chief said on Thursday that his force would declare victory within a week. He was later contradicted by U.S. President Donald Trump, who said the SDF had retaken 100 percent of the territory once held by IS.

Washington has about 2,000 troops in Syria, mainly to support the SDF in fighting IS. Trump announced in December he would withdraw all of them, but the White House partially reversed itself last month, saying some 400 troops would stay.

Some 40,000 people bearing various nationalities have left the jihadists' diminishing territory in the last three months as the SDF sought to oust the militants from remaining pockets.

The number of evacuees streaming out of Baghouz surpassed initial estimates of how many were inside. Afrin told Reuters on Thursday that many of the people leaving the enclave had been sheltering underground in caves and tunnels.

An 27-year-old Indonesian widow who emerged on Friday said she would have liked to stay in IS territory but conceded that conditions had become untenable.

"I have no money, I have no food for my baby, no medicine, nothing for my baby, so I must go out," she told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Issam Abdullah; Writing by Stephen Kalin and Tom Perry; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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