NEAR BAGHOUZ: The operation to destroy IS’s final vestige of rule in Iraq and Syria hit a temporary snag on Thursday, as an expected evacuation of the remaining civilians from its last enclave in eastern Syria did not go ahead.
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which has steadily driven the fighters down the Euphrates, has surrounded them at Baghouz near the Iraqi border, but does not want to mount a final attack until all civilians are out.
Iraqi sources said the SDF handed over more then 150 Iraqi and other foreign fighters to Iraq on Thursday, under a deal involving a total of 502.
The SDF had expected to pull the last civilians from Baghouz on Thursday, but trucks it sent in left empty.
“We can’t get into details, but today no civilians came out,” SDF official Mustafa Bali said.
Baghouz is all that remains for IS in the Euphrates valley region that became its final populated stronghold in Iraq and Syria after it lost its major cities of Mosul and Raqqa in 2017.
Its capture will nudge the eight-year-old Syrian war towards a new phase, with US President Donald Trump’s pledge to withdraw troops leaving a security vacuum that other powers are seeking to fill.
Though the fall of Baghouz marks a milestone in the campaign against IS and the wider conflict in Syria, IS is still seen as a major security threat.
The group has steadily turned to guerrilla warfare and still holds territory in a remote, sparsely populated area west of the Euphrates River — a part of Syria otherwise controlled by the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian allies.
Bali said the SDF would attack Baghouz once the civilian evacuation was complete. He did not say how much more time was needed to finish off the remaining IS fighters, or give a new estimate of how many fighters remained.
The SDF has previously estimated several hundred fighters — believed mostly to be foreign fighters — are still inside.
A Reuters witness saw warplanes in the sky over Baghouz on Thursday though there was no sound of fighting or shelling.
The US-led coalition said on Wednesday “the most hardened” fighters remain in Baghouz.
More than 2,000 civilians left the enclave on Wednesday, the SDF said. It has said more than 20,000 civilians left Baghouz in the days leading up to the start of the SDF’s final push to capture the enclave this month.
SDF and coalition forces are recording the names and questioning everyone who has left in the civilian convoys.
Many of the people who left the enclave in civilian convoys have been Iraqis, some of whom said they had crossed from Iraq into Syria as Iraqi government forces made gains against IS on the other side of the frontier.
— Reuters
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