BAGHOUZ (Syria), March 25 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Dozens of Daesh group extremists emerged from tunnels to surrender to US-backed forces in eastern Syria on Sunday, a day after their “caliphate” was declared defeated.
Syria’s Kurds warned that despite the demise of the proto-state, the thousands of foreign jihadists they have detained are a time-bomb the world urgently needs to defuse.
Dozens of people – mostly men – file out of the battered jihadist encampment in the remote village of Baghouz near the Iraqi border to board pickup trucks.
“They are fighters who came out of tunnels and surrendered today,” Kurdish spokesman Jiaker Amed said.
Some sported thick beards and wore long woollen kaftans over their dark-coloured robes, or a chequered scarf around their faces, as they trudged out of their final hideout under the drizzle.
World leaders were quick to hail Saturday’s announcement by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that the last shred of land controlled by Daesh in Syria had been conquered.
The SDF is continuing to carry out operations to rout out any remaining jihadists in the area and uncover possible weapons caches.
According to the SDF, 66,000 people left the last pocket since January, including 5,000 militants and 24,000 of their relatives.
The assault was paused multiple times as the force allowed people to evacuate from the enclave on the banks of the Euphrates.
The SDF have screened droves of people scrambling out of Baghouz in recent weeks, detaining suspected militants and trucking civilians and Daesh relatives to camps further north.
Most relatives have been crammed into the Al-Hol camp, a facility built for 20,000 people but which now shelters 72,000.
The Kurdish administration in northeastern Syria has warned it does not have capacity to detain so many people, let alone put them on trial.
But the home countries of suspected IS members are reluctant to take them back, due to potential security risks and the likely public backlash.
Several held in Syria have been stripped of their citizenship.
The conflict in Syria has killed more than 370,000 people since it erupted eight years ago, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor says. — NNN-AGENCIES