After fight, many ISIS holdouts give up

BAGHOUZ, Syria — U.S.-backed Syrian fighters said Thursday that a “large number” of Islamic State militants and their families are surrendering a day after intense fighting in the last speck of land the extremists still hold in eastern Syria.

At the edge of Baghouz, the village where the militants are still holed up, men, women and children climbed a road that winds along a cliff overlooking what remains of a tent encampment, heading out. Members of the Syrian Democratic Forces said they searched the evacuees as they reached the front lines.

Syrian Democratic Forces spokesman Mustafa Bali said after an intensive offensive Wednesday from multiple fronts, “a large number” of militants and their families “started to surrender” early Thursday.

The U.N. said in a report Wednesday that some 7,000 new evacuees are expected to arrive at an already overpopulated camp to the north over the next few days.

The Syrian Democratic Forces said the militants took advantage of dusty and windy conditions a day earlier to open counterattacks. The U.S.-backed forces fought back, repelling the offensive and apparently triggering the latest evacuation.

Some fighters have surrendered in recent weeks, but hard-core militants, including many foreigners, are still holed up in the shrinking space along the eastern banks of the Euphrates River. Since early February, more than 10,000 civilians were evacuated from the Islamic State-held pocket, most of them family members of militant fighters.