Civilians Evacuated from Last ISIS Stronghold in Syria as the End Nears
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 transport evacuees 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 black garments covering their faces known as niqabs.
The BBC posted a report on the Baghouz enclave on YouTube on Tuesday:
There were reports of Islamic State group militants surrendering, but the U.S.-led coalition said those reports could not be independently verified.
In a tweet, the coalition said Syrian Democratic Forces continue to receive civilians attempting to escape to safety and the most hardened IS fighters still remain in Baghouz.
The number of those evacuated was not clear, nor whether Islamic State group militants were also on board the trucks.
Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the SDF, the U.S.-backed militia spearheading the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria, confirmed the trucks were carrying civilians out of the enclave.
He said a record of those evacuated would be made available later.
About 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.
Such an operation would take place after civilians were either evacuated or separated from the militants, Bali said.
An 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 territory held by the Islamic State group, 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 Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
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