BAGHOUZ (Syria), March 4 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Kurdish-led forces backed by US warplanes rained artillery fire and air strikes Sunday on besieged and outgunned extremists making a desperate last stand in a remote Syrian village.
Daesh group fighters holed up in Baghouz, the last dreg of the once-sprawling “caliphate” that their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed in 2014, responded with small arms fire as the Syrian Democratic Forces advanced.
The crackle and thud of gunfire and shelling filled the air, as did plumes of thick black smoke over Baghouz, a small cluster of ruined buildings nestled in a palm-lined bend of the Euphrates.
“There are tunnels. We’re not sure how many members of the Daesh are still inside,” an SDF commander said from a rooftop about 400 metres from the front line.
“They are completely besieged. They have planted many explosive devices in the houses and on the roads,” he said.
The extremists’ last redoubt was said to be about half a square kilometre in size a week ago and it shrank even further with the last few hours of fighting.
The SDF had in recent days maintained a buffer of about 1km between their forces and the holdout extremists hunkered down in their very last bastion.
But they resumed their advance on Friday evening after processing what they said was the last batch of civilians, mostly extremists’ relatives, fleeing the enclave.
The extremists are massively outnumbered and unlikely to hold out very long against the SDF, who launched their broad offensive against remaining IS strongholds in the Euphrates Valley six months ago.
The capture of Baghouz would mark the end of Daesh territorial control in the region and deal a death blow to the “caliphate”, which once covered huge swathes of Syria and Iraq.
At its peak more than four years ago, the proto-state created by Daesh was the size of Britain and administered millions of people, including two million in Iraq’s second city of Mosul.
It minted its own currency, levied taxes, published a wide array of propaganda material and designed its own school curricula.
The caliphate effectively collapsed in 2017 when Daesh lost most of its major cities in both countries.
The loss of Baghouz, which the SDF says is only days away, would carry mostly symbolic value.
The latest military operation has nonetheless sparked a major humanitarian emergency, with thousands of people of various nationalities emerging from the ruins of the “caliphate” and washing up in Kurdish-run camps.
The SDF thrust forward on Saturday and closer combat ensued at night, with tracer ammunition flashing glimpses of the raging battle ripping the village apart.
The area’s Kurdish administration on Saturday, announced the release of 283 Syrians who had been suspected of belonging to Daesh but were found, after more investigation, to have “no blood on their hands”. — NNN-AGENCIES
