Hundreds flee as ferocious battle in Syria’s Daesh holdout enters 5th day

The ferocious battle for Daesh’s last bastion in eastern Syria entered its fifth day on Wednesday, as exhausted families left the evershrinking scrap of land where holdout militants have been boxed in by Kurdish-led forces.

Hundreds fled day and night from Baghouz, near the enclave where diehard Daesh militants are making their last stand, as plumes of grey smoke billowed into the sky over the flat, desolate town.

After a pause of more than a week to allow out civilians, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) declared a final push to retake the pocket of land from the extremists on Saturday, aided by the warplanes and artillery of a US-led coalition.

SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali said on Tuesday that 600 civilians had fled the combat zone overnight and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said another 350 made it out that day. The SDF have built up a pair of sand embankments on a scrubby plateau overlooking Baghouz.

Most of the neighborhoods visible along the hazy horizon are under their control, but the southernmost parts of the small town — from which sounds of a firefight can and young children with dirty hair. About half were Ukrainian or Russian women and their children, while most of the others were Syrian.

A 34-year-old woman from Crimea tore pieces of bread to give her three children. She identified herself as Umm Khaled and said she came to Syria five years ago after divorcing her Tatar husband.

Once there, she married an Azeri Daesh member and had two other children. “They are all fatherless now,” she told AFP in broken Arabic, her voice shaking.

Coalition spokesman Sean Ryan said US-backed forces were facing a fierce fightback.

“The progress is slow and methodical as the enemy is fully entrenched and” Daesh militants continue to conduct counter attacks, he said. On Monday, the Observatory said a coalition airstrike killed 16 civilians.

An Italian journalist was also wounded as he covered the clashes and evacuated for treatment, a colleague said on Twitter.

The SDF launched the battle to expel Daesh from the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor in September, slowly tightening the noose around the militants and their families since December.