Hundreds of IS fighters surrender in east Syria
FINAL FRONTIER Freeing Baghouz would end terror in the country, says US
AL-OMAR OIL FIELD BASE, SYRIA: Hundreds of Islamic State (IS) militants, many of them foreigners, have surrendered to Us-backed fighters in eastern Syria, bringing Kurdish-led forces closer to taking full control of the last remaining area controlled by the extremists.
Çiyager Amed, an official with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), confirmed that a number of IS fighters who had been holed up in Baghouz gave themselves up, without giving numbers.
He said most of those remaining were Iraqis and foreigners and that very few civilians remained in the tiny area still controlled by IS, although women and children continued to trickle out of the enclave.
The capture of Baghouz and nearby areas would mark the end of a devastating four-year global campaign against the extremist group.
US President Donald Trump has said the group is all but defeated, and had announced in December that he would withdraw all US forces from Syria.
Amed said the operation was slowed down due to the militants’ use of civilians as human shields.
Mustafa Bali, an SDF spokesman, said hundreds of women and c hi l dren c ame out on Wednesday.
Bali also said the fighters who remained appeared to be among the IS elite who have lots of experience and are fighting fiercely.
The latest fighting caused an exodus of around 20,000 civilians from Baghouz and nearby areas, many of them the foreign wives and children of IS militants. The SDF is holding hundreds of foreign fighters it says are a burden on the force, but their own countries don’t want them back.