SDF battles tough obstacles to take last Daesh pocket
Suicide bombers, land mines, snipers and tunnels hindering final push against terrorists
Syrian fighters backed by artillery fire from a US-led coalition battled a fierce terrorist fightback on Monday as they pushed to retake a last morsel of territory from Daesh.
Mushrooming black clouds rose over the embattled terrorist holdout in eastern Syria, as missiles and a warplane streaked through the sky
More than four years after the extremists declared a “caliphate” across large parts of Syria and Iraq, several offensives have whittled that proto-state down to a tiny holdout.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Saturday announced the final push to expel hundreds of diehard terrorists from that patch on the Iraq border.
Daesh “launched a counterattack on our forces and we are now responding with rockets, airstrikes and direct clashes,” SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali said on Monday.
He said there were “dozens of SDF hostages held” by Daesh inside their last foothold, but denied reports of executions.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said the alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters had pressed on Monday morning in the face of tough obstacles.
The SDF are advancing slowly in what remains of the Daesh pocket on the edges of the village of Baghouz, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.
But land mines, Daesh snipers, and tunnels the extremists have dug out for their defense are hindering the advance, he said.
Backed by coalition airstrikes, the SDF alliance has been battling to oust the terrorists from the east- ern province of Deir Ezzor since September.
Since December, tens of thousands of people, most women and children related to Daesh fighters, have fled to SDF territory.
US-backed forces have screened the new arrivals, weeding out potential jihadists for questioning.
On Monday, dozens of coalition and SDF fighters were stationed at a screening point for new arrivals from Daesh areas.
Coalition forces stood over about 20 men who were crouching on the ground.
Some 600 people were able to reach SDF territory on Sunday after fleeing the fighting, the Observatory said.
Among them, were 20 suspected Daesh members, including two French women, seven Turks, and three Ukrainians, said the monitor, which relies on sources inside Syria.
The SDF — which has said it expects the final offensive to be over in days — announced Sunday that it had taken some 40 positions from the terrorists following direct combat involving light weapons.
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The alliance had earlier said that up to 600 jihadists as well as hundreds of civilians could remain inside a patch 4 sq. km.
Spokesman Bali said Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the man who pronounced the cross-border “caliphate” in 2014, was not among them, and likely not in Syria.
At the height of their rule, the jihadists imposed their brutal rules on a territory roughly the size of Britain.
But military offensives in both countries, including by the SDF, have since retaken the vast bulk of their territory.