US-backed forces make final push against IS stronghold

▶ Fierce fighting in eastern Syria

US-backed forces were locked in fierce fighting Sunday as they pressed the battle against the last shred of the Islamic State (IS) group’s “caliphate” in eastern Syria.

The jihadists overran large parts of the country and neighboring Iraq in 2014, but various military offensives have since reduced that territory to a patch on the Iraqi border.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), supported by a US-led coalition, announced a final push to retake the jihadist pocket late Saturday, after a pause of more than a week to allow civilians to flee. An SDF field commander said fighting was ongoing on Sunday morning. “We have launched an assault and the fighters are advancing,” he told AFP.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor group said coalition planes and artillery bombarded jihadist positions.

“The battle is ongoing. There were heavy clashes this morning, with land mines going off,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britainbased Observatory.

The SDF launched an offensive to expel IS from the oil-rich eastern province of Deir Ezzor in September. The Kurdish-led alliance has since whittled down jihadist-held territory to a scrap of just four square kilometers on the eastern banks of the Euphrates.

Up to 600 jihadists could still remain inside, most of them foreigners, according to SDF spokesperson Mustafa Bali.

Since fighting intensified in December, more than 37,000 people, mostly wives and children of jihadist fighters, have fled out into SDF-held desert areas, the Observatory said.

That figure includes some 3,400 suspected jihadists detained by the SDF, according to the monitor, which relies on sources inside Syria for its information.

At the height of their rule, the jihadists imposed their brutal interpretation of Islamic law on a territory spanning parts of Syria and Iraq that was roughly the size of Britain.

But separate military offensives in both countries, including by the SDF, have since retaken the vast bulk of that “caliphate.”

On Saturday, Bali said he expected the battle for the last patch of IS territory to be over in days. The jihadists however retain a presence in Syria’s vast Badia desert, and have claimed a series of deadly attacks by sleeper cells in SDF-held areas.