Hundreds flee from war zone in Baghouz
The ferocious battle for the Islamic State’s last bastion in eastern Syria entered its fifth day on Wednesday, as exhausted families left the ever shrinking scrap of land where holdout jihadists have been boxed in by Kurdish-led forces.
Hundreds fled day and night from Baghouz, near the enclave where diehard IS fighters are making their last stand, as plumes of grey smoke billowed into the sky over the flat, desolate town. The group declared a crossborder “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq in 2014, but various military campaigns have chipped its territory down to less than four square kilometres on the Iraqi border.
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 Mustefa Bali said on Tuesday that 600 civilians had fled the combat zone overnight and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britainbased war monitor, said another 350 made it out that day.
Half a dozen among the new arrivals were adult men. The rest were women, panting after their long trudge out of Baghouz, 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 husband.