The Last Stand of ISIS: The SDF & Coalition Assault Resumes on Final ISIS Stronghold After The Brutal Assault Halted to Allow Thousands to Flee The Jihadists
- The Forces announced they would resume the siege of Baghouz
- The brutal assault was called off last month to evacuate thousands fleeing ISIS
- Men - many suspected fighters - women and children were carted away
- An SDF spokesman announced there are now 'only terrorists left in Baghouz'
Daily Mail UK 4 MAR 2019.
A spokesman for the
SDF said they would continue their assault on Baghouz in eastern
Syria where the once proud 'caliphate' has been brought to its knees.
Mustafa Bali said there were 'only terrorists left in Baghouz' and announced his forces would resume their efforts after halting last month.
Experts believe their are still hundreds of IS militants who have cowered behind their wives and children in caves and tunnels in their last bastion.
On their knees: A Bosnian man suspected of being an ISIS fighter kneels before SDF men as he surrenders from Baghouz on Friday
Men and boys suspected of being Islamic State group fighters raise up their hands as they await to be searched by members of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces
Two injured boys suspected of being Islamic State supporters lay on the back of a truck...
Thousands of men - many of them suspected terrorists - women and children have limped from the ruins in the last three weeks.
They have been painstakingly driven out into the desert, separated and screened by the Kurdish forces before being moved north to camps in al-Hol.
The military campaign to drive out the the militants from the eastern banks of the Euphrates began in September, pushing them down toward this last corner in the village near the Iraqi border.
The military operation was halted on February 12 after the SDF discovered there was still a large number of civilians and hostages in the territory, which sits atop caves and tunnels where they had been hiding.
The evacuees said food was running low and clean water and medicine were scarce.
Many defended what remained of the extremist group's territorial hold, which once spanned a third of Iraq and Syria.
An SDF militia man raises the hat of a Bosnian man suspected of fighting for the brutal Islamic State terror group
Filthy and distraught looking children are loaded onto the back of truck as they await transport by the SDF on the outskirts of Baghouz
A girl waits to be screened on neutral ground away from the miserable last stronghold at Baghouz
Heavily shrouded women in the niqab, one holding a small child, wait to be screened by the SDF forces after making a last minute surrender
Bali would not speculate on how long the military operation might take but said he expects a 'fierce battle.'
He said the battles are expected to take place in a very small area that includes a complex network of tunnels, as well as suicide bombers and land mines.
'The battle to finish off what is left Daesh has started,' said SDF commander Adnan Afrin, using the Arabic acronym for IS.
The capture of the last pocket still held by IS fighters in Baghouz would mark the end of a devastating four-year global campaign to end the extremist group's hold on territory in Syria and Iraq - their so-called 'caliphate' that at the height of the group's power in 2014 controlled nearly a third of both Iraq and Syria.
A little girl gazes up at an SDF fighter who holds his assault rifle fast as his comrades work to screen those fleeing ISIS
Boys clamber up the sides of a truck while women sit in the back as they await transport, hoping to be taken to safety at the camps in al-Hol
Yezidi boys share a meal in a area held by the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces
In the last week alone, 13,000 people, most of them women and children, arrived at the al-Hol camp in Hassakeh province which now houses approximately 45,000 people, according to the United Nations.
In a statement Friday, the U.N. cited reports that more than 84 people, two thirds of them young children under five years of age, have died since December on their way to al-Hol camp after fleeing the extremist group in Syria's Deir el-Zour province.
'Many of the arrivals are exhausted, hungry and sick,' according to Jens Laerke, spokesman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), at a news briefing in Geneva.
There is a flash of light in the dark town as an airstrike hits an Islamic State weapons depot. A few seconds later, a ball of flame engulfs the entire neighbourhood.
The sonic boom sends shockwaves through Baghuz, shaking the ground miles away, and for a second everything and everyone is stunned into silence.
Then the artillery fire starts up again. Five years after Isis swept across Syria and Iraq, all that remains of the “caliphate” that at its peak stretched across two countries and controlled 10 million people is a handful of streets in a bend of the Euphrates river running through this desert town, which will be retaken in the next few days.
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