Snipers and starvation in IS caliphate’s last stand

SNIPERS IN AREAS CONTROLLED BY SYRIA S GOVERNMENT PICKED OFF WOMEN AND CHILDREN FETCHING WATER FROM THE RIVER

Even when US coalition air strikes and artillery paused for people to evacuate during lulls in fighting, the killing did not stop in the final Islamic State (IS) enclave.

Snipers in areas controlled by Syria’s government near the village of Baghouz picked off women and children fetching water from the river or climbing the small hill to seek medical help in Kurdish-controlled territory, survivors said.

People died from their wounds and children starved.

“There were lines of bodies, men, women and children. I didn’t count them,” said Katrin Aleksandr, a Ukrainian woman who left Baghouz in eastern Syria in the last days of the fighting. She lay in a hospital bed with her head stitched up, two black eyes and shrapnel wounds to her limbs. Her husband, a militant, was killed in the airstrike that wounded her.

“Everything was on fire, including tents people lived in,” she said.

Those who lived through the final days of IS’s self-declared caliphate said many people had stayed or were trapped in trenches, tunnels and tents in Baghouz.

Aleksandr and several other people interviewed by Reuters in camps and hospitals, including supporters and critics of IS, gave separate but similar accounts. They say bombardment by US-backed forces and sniper fire from Syrian government areas killed scores, if not hundreds, as fighters and families scrabbled over food.

US-backed forces in March declared the full territorial defeat of IS in Iraq and Syria.

Asked about events in Baghouz, the US-led coalition said it uses “stringent methods to ... allow halts to strikes if any civilians would be put in danger,” and investigates all reports of civilian casualties.

The Syrian government and Shi’ite Mulsim militias deny targeting civilians in fighting.

IS deployed car bombs and suicide belts during weeks of fighting for Baghouz. The Sunni Islamist group left a trail of destruction, killed thousands of people and helped cause many more deaths by trapping civilians in battles to drive it out.

But its adversaries have often used intense bombardment to end those battles in which civilians were killed, fuelling a humanitarian crisis and resentment among those who once lived in the areas it controlled.

In Mosul, the group’s Iraqi stronghold from 2014 to 2017, aerial and ground bombardment destroyed its centre and killed thousands of civilians, according to rights groups. Raqqa in northern Syria was largely destroyed in 2017 before some militants were allowed to evacuate. Many of them are thought to have ended up in Baghouz.

IS supporters, those who tolerated the group and even some critics say its defeat has come at too high a cost in lives and destruction, creating anger, which the militants are likely to try to exploit as they wage a growing insurgency.

“There’s no shelter in Baghouz, just trenches and tents. Shells landed every 20 minutes. I left after an explosion killed my husband and two of my children,” said Salma Ibrahim, a 20year-old Moroccan IS supporter at al-Hol camp where many displaced by violence now live.

“Of people who went to the river to get water, maybe half returned,” she said.

Baghouz, now under the control of the Kurdish-led and US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), is separated by the Euphrates River from territory controlled by the Syrian army and its allies including Iraqi Shi’ite Muslim militias, who have been accused of revenge attacks against Sunnis.

With IS no longer holding any of eastern Syria, the Euphrates effectively demarcates rival areas of Kurdish control to its east and Syrian government control to the west.

Reporters have mostly been prevented from reaching Baghouz since the battle entered its final phase.

Some civilians said IS forced them to stay almost until the end. “Fighters guarded women and children and wouldn’t let us go,” said Amal Susi, a 20-yearold Lebanese woman at al-Hol.

She said militants and families fought over bags of flour and scraps of meat. “People starved,” she said.

“When we finally left, we saw bodies of children missing limbs and heads.”