Spectre of the evil thugs who killed my son hangs over us
Our Chris with Khartab
became an armed rebellion, which split into groups, before IS migrated from neighbouring Iraq.
Half of Syria’s population has been unhoused, 5.6 million are refugees, half a million have died – including many women and children – and IS has been driven underground.
The group’s former Raqqa HQ, which the SDF took four months to overrun, is still riddled with IS cells.
The final battle for Baghouz, its last sliver of land, left tens of thousands of IS brides and children in secure SDF refugee camps in northern Syria.
The army wants to secure Rojava, where IS made its last stand, and stop the sleeper cells.
Everywhere locals whisper fears about the cells – fuelled further by the raging crop fires, the worst in years, sweeping through Syria. One local said: “Sleeper cells are starting the fires. It is terrifying if it is true but nobody knows.
“A village could burn at night killing everyone. These fires have claimed lives already.”
The remote SDF Shahin outpost, 20 miles into the scorched desert outside Hasakah took Kurds seven months to take from IS. It is now home to a counter-terror unit fighting the sleeper cells.
Commander Heval Demhat Brosk, BRUTAL Our Kotey story Counter-terror troops 29, said: “It was a tough battle to take the base from them but we know Islamic State are still out there.”
As we watched troops training for counter-terror missions in baking 45C heat, another soldier called Khartab, 28, added: “I fought Islamic State in Baghouz. It’s hard to describe fighting for 24 hours a day. We will fight as long as we are alive.”
At its peak, the IS caliphate held 34,000 square miles of territory from West Syria to East Iraq and ruled more than eight million people.
It generated a war chest of billions of dollars from extortion, kidnapping, bank robberies, stealing and selling antiquities and oil theft.
IS was the biggest and richest terror group in modern history.
Millions have been squirrelled away and even banked in unscrupulous financial establishments and al-Baghdadi and his henchmen still have access to vast funds.
IS also had an army of 30,000 fighters, almost a third the size of the British army. In almost a decade, from a tiny al-Qaeda splinter group it became a monster-sized death cult.
But it also had medics, teachers, financial clerks and all of the administration personnel of a growing society. And it had influence over a network of collaborators from Iraq to Syria and into Europe via Turkey.
IS may well have been defeated in its heartlands, but Western intelligence agencies still have a huge battle on their hands to contain the terrorists hell bent on revenge. GRIEF Mum Noma heard beating IN a small village outside Hasakah, north Syria, the horror of IS’s cruel reign hangs over the community.
Noma Hemedi el-Gerzi, who is in her mid-50s, lost son Shaker, 25, after he helped a “stranger” whose motorbike had broken down.
Sitting cross-legged in her home she told us tearfully: “There was an argument as Shaker tried to leave. This stranger was an Islamic State fighter and they would not let him.
“Shaker told the man, ‘Have you no god that you won’t let me go after I helped you?’. They beat him with rifles. I heard his screams from our home. My poor Shaker, he was just trying to help someone.”
Shaker was jailed and told: “If you tell the judge you abused God then he will set you free as he will know you are telling the truth.”
Shaker made the forced admission but was shot dead.
In another village, Sheikh Saleh al-Qhalaf, 93, the most loved elder in the area, was accused by IS of being a “witch”.
Days before the defeat of IS he was arrested and they stole his family’s life savings to pay for their disappearance.
But the dad-of-11 refused to cower in front of the terrorist thugs.
His 41-year-old son Hamoud Saleh al–Qalaf said: “They held him for many days, saying he was a witch. Bravely he told a visitor, ‘Give my regards to my family’. He knew what would happen.
“He met with the IS lawyer at the jail and he was apparently saying, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong, so why do you want to kill me, to steal from me?’. The lawyer shouted back and my father said something like, ‘I will not be judged by someone like you’, and he spat in his face. He was brave to the end.
“They shot him, many times. He was still alive and they shot him again, 14 times and dumped his body near our home.” VICTIMS Shakar, top, and Saleh were both killed