Civilians, many children, evacuate IS-held enclave
Young girls and boys stared out of the back of trucks, their faces
dirty, their eyes filled with terror, exhaustion and uncertainty, as hundreds of men, women and children were evacuated from the Islamic State group’s last enclave in eastern Syria on Wednesday. The evacuation may signal an imminent end to the territorial rule of the militants self-declared “caliphate” that once stretched across much of Syria and Iraq.
Their condition pointed to the squalor that IS has been reduced to in the tiny tent camp on the banks of the Euphrates River. Food and water have been run- ning out in the pocket, where some 300 IS militants along
with hundreds of civilians — believed to be mostly their families — have been under
siege for more than a week by U.S.-backed forces. Conditions have been so bad that at least 60 people pre
viously evacuated from the militants’ shrinking territory subsequently died of malnutrition or exhaustion.
The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces surround-
ing the patch of land have been unable to carry out a final assault on it because of the presence of the civilians. It was unclear how after days of militants preventing civil- ians from leaving, the orga- nized evacuation of hun- dreds was possible.
An SDF spokesman said a number of IS fighters were hiding among the civilians and were later arrested. SDF officials said clashes
overnight, airstrikes and special operations facilitated the movement of the hundreds of civilians toward exits already designated by the SDF and trucks that had already been sent for evacuation. Witnesses said there were overnight strikes in the enclave. SDF officials said earlier that some militants asked for an exit, a request they declined. Instead, they said a military operation would follow the evacuation and separation of civilians.
The enclave’s recapture by U.S.-backed Syrian fighters would spell the territorial defeat of IS and allow President Donald Trump to begin withdrawing Ameri- can troops from northern Syria, as he has pledged to do, opening a new chapter in Syria’s eight-year civil war. Few believe, however, that
ending the group’s territorial rule will end the threat posed by an organization that still stages and inspires attacks through sleeper cells in both Syria and Iraq.
In past weeks, nearly 20,000 have walked for hours through a humanitarian corridor to exit the militants’ last patch of territory. In Wednesday’s evacuation, they filtered out through a gap surrounding the camp — with IS fighters watching from one side, SDF fighters from the other side — and then they boarded the trucks.
“Our (special forces) units are doing their job to complete the evacuation,” SDF’s Mustafa Bali said.