Deir al Zour, Syria: Kurdish-led Syrian forces said on Sunday that civilians from IS families are prompting a delay in the final battle against the extremist group’s last pocket in eastern Syria.
“The existence of civilians from the families of (IS) militants in the village of Baghouz has delayed the storming and military resolution,” Kino Gabriel, a spokesman for the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), told a press conference in the eastern province of Deir al Zour.
He asserted that the operation will continue until the IS militants are eradicated or surrender.
The SDF estimates that 34,000 civilians have been evacuated from Baghouz since January, while 64,120 family members of the militants, including 5,000 terrorists, have surrendered.
Syria’s official news agency SANA reported on Sunday that 10 civilians, including children, were killed in a US-led coalition airstrike on Baghouz camp. There was no immediate comment from the US-led alliance.
Baghouz, located on the Euphrates River in eastern Syria near the border with Iraq, is the last significant territory still in the hands of IS, which for years controlled swathes of both countries. IS has been driven from almost all the territory it once seized in Syria and neighbouring Iraq, but its operatives have left behind countless landmines.
At least 16 civilians were killed in an explosion of several landmines left behind by the extremist group in Syria’s eastern province of Deir al Zour, a war monitor reported on Sunday. The landmines went off late Saturday, hitting a vehicle carrying truffle collectors in the western section of Deir al Zour, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights added.
The fatalities included 14 women. Thirty-two others were injured in the blast, according to the Britain-based watchdog. Syria’s state news agency SANA reported that four civilians were killed and 36 others were injured late on Saturday when a landmine exploded in the same area controlled by government forces.
There have been several deadly landmine blasts recently in Syrian areas that were once under IS’s control. Earlier this month, at least eight civilians were killed in a landmine blast in the ancient city of Palmyra, Syrian state media reported. And last month, at least 18 workers were killed when a landmine hit their vehicle near Syria’s western city of Hama.
Meanwhile, thousands of people are believed to remain inside the IS group’s last sliver of territory in eastern Syria, a US-backed force said on Sunday citing evacuees, hampering the operation to crush the fighters.
— dpa
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
