Operation to end last IS pocket in Syria hits evacuation snag
NEAR BAGHOUZ, Syria: The operation to destroy Islamic State’s final vestige of rule in Iraq and Syria hit a temporary snag yesterday, as an expected evacuation of the remaining civilians from its last enclave in eastern Syria did not go ahead.
The United Statesbacked Syrian Democratic Forces, which has steadily driven the jihadists down the Euphrates, has surrounded them at Baghouz near the Iraqi border, but does not want to mount a final attack until all civilians are out.
Iraqi sources said the SDF handed over more then 150 Iraqi and other foreign jihadists to Iraq yesterday, under a deal involving a total of 502.
The SDF had expected to pull the last civilians from Baghouz yesteray, but trucks it sent in left empty. ‘‘We can’t get into details, but today no civilians came out,’’ SDF official Mustafa Bali said.
Baghouz is all that remains for Islamic State in the Euphrates valley region that became its final populated stronghold in Iraq and Syria after it lost its major cities of Mosul and Raqqa in 2017.
The USled coalition fighting Islamic State was verifying whether an air strike in Baghouz on Thursday killed French jihadist Fabien Clain, who voiced the recording claiming the November 2015 attacks on Paris, US and French sources said.
In the 2015 attacks, gunmen and suicide bombers killed 129 people in the French capital.
‘‘During coalition operations to regain the Islamic State’s last bastion, it is possible indeed that Fabien Clain was killed,’’ French Defence Minister Florence Parly said on her Twitter account.
France’s military and foreign ministry declined comment.
The capture of Baghouz will nudge the eightyearold Syrian war towards a new phase. US President Donald Trump’s pledge to withdraw troops leaves a security vacuum other powers are seeking to fill.
Although the fall of Baghouz marks a milestone in the campaign against IS and the wider conflict in Syria, the group is still seen as a major security threat.
The group has steadily turned to guerrilla warfare and still holds territory in a remote, sparsely populated area west of the Euphrates River — a part of Syria otherwise controlled by the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian allies.
Bali said the SDF would attack Baghouz once the civilian evacuation was complete. He did not say how much more time was needed to finish off the remaining Islamic State militants, or give a new estimate of how many fighters remained.
The SDF has previously estimated several hundred fighters — believed mostly to be foreign jihadists — are still inside.
A Reuters witness saw warplanes in the sky over Baghouz yesterday although there was no sound of fighting or shelling.
The USled coalition said on Thursday ‘‘the most hardened’’ jihadists remain in Baghouz.
More than 2000 civilians left the enclave on Thursday, the SDF said. It has said more than 20,000 civilians left Baghouz in the days leading up to the start of the SDF’s final push to cap ture the enclave this month.
The SDF has not ruled out the possibility some Islamic State fighters had left Baghouz with the civilians.
SDF and coalition forces are recording the names and questioning everyone who has left in the civilian convoys.
Many of the people who left the enclave in civilian convoys have been Iraqis, some of whom said they had crossed from Iraq into Syria as Iraqi government forces made gains against Islamic State on the other side of the frontier.
Two Iraqi military sources told Reuters the handover of Islamic State fighters yesterday was the first of several.
‘‘The majority of the fighters are Iraqi,’’ said a military colonel whose unit is stationed at the Syrian border. ‘‘But we have a few foreigners.’’ — Reuters