US-backed Syria force announces final push against IS

THE US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces said Saturday it had begun the “final battle” to oust the Islamic State group from the last scrap of territory it holds in eastern Syria.

IS overran large parts of the country and neighbouring Iraq in 2014, declaring a “caliphate” there, but various military offensives have reduced it to a fragment.

Backed by air strikes of the US-led coalition against IS, the KurdishArab alliance has in recent months cornered the jihadists in a final pocket of territory in Syria’s eastern province of Deir Ezzor.

After a pause of more than a week to allow civilians to flee, the SDF said Saturday it had resumed the fight to seize the last four-square-kilometre (one-square-mile) patch from the jihadists.

“The SDF have launched the final battle to crush IS... in the village of Baghouz,” the SDF said in a statement.

“After ten days of evacuating more than 20,000 civilians... the battle was launched tonight” to wipe out the last remnants of the organisation, it said.

SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali told AFP: “The battle has started.”

“This battle will be sealed in the coming days,” he added.

Bali said there could be up to 600 IS fighters still inside the pocket, most of them foreigners.

Hundreds of civilians are also believed to be inside.

“We have special units whose job it is to direct civilians to corridors they can cross” to safety, he said.

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He said that when the SDF detects movement from IS fighters, they bomb them, but added: “There have not been any major changes.”

At the height of its rule, IS controlled territory the size of Britain.

But a series of separate military operations, including by the SDF, have left its proto-state in tatters.

On Thursday, the coalition said the “caliphate” had massively shrunk.

Major General Christopher Ghika, the coalition’s deputy commander, described the size of the last IS pocket as “now less than one percent of the original caliphate”.

More than 37,000 people, mostly wives and children of jihadist fighters, have fled IS territory since the SDF intensified its offensive in December, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Britain-based war monitor has said that figure includes some 3,200 suspected jihadists.

Bali, of the SDF, said that “in the last two months, most who handed themselves in or were arrested were foreign”.

The SDF launched an operation to expel IS from Deir Ezzor in September, and has slowly advanced against IS despite the jihadists putting up a fierce fightback.