US-BACKED SYRIA FORCES START 'FINAL BATTLE AGAINST ISIL
AFPQAMISHLI, Syria (AFP-Jiji) — The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces said Saturday it had begun the “final battle” to oust Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant extremists from the last scrap of territory it holds in eastern Syria.
ISIL overran large parts of the country and neighboring Iraq in 2014, declaring a “caliphate” there, but various military offensives have reduced it to a fragment.
Backed by airstrikes of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIL, the Kurdish-Arab alliance has in recent months cornered the jihadists in a final pocket of territory in Syria’s eastern province of Deir Ezzor.
After a pause of more than a week to allow civilians to flee, the SDF said Saturday it had resumed the fight to seize the last 4-square-kilometer patch from the jihadists.
“The SDF have launched the final battle to crush IS … in the village of Baghouz,” the SDF said in a statement.
“After ten days of evacuating more than 20,000 civilians … the battle was launched tonight” to wipe out the last remnants of the organization, it said.
SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali told AFP, “The battle has started.”
“This battle will be sealed in the coming days,” he added.
Bali said there could be up to 600 ISIL fighters still inside the pocket, most of them foreigners. Hundreds of civilians are also believed to be inside.
“We have special units whose job it is to direct civilians to corridors they can cross” to safety, he said.
Near the battlefield, an SDF spokesman at the Omar oil field turned military base said “progress is slow.” He said that when the SDF detects movement from ISIL fighters, they bomb them, but added, “There have not been any major changes.”
At the height of its rule, ISIL controlled territory the size of Britain. But a series of separate military operations, including by the SDF, have left its proto-state in tatters.
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