Free Republic

Warplanes flew near Baghouz in eastern Syria early on Wednesday, a Reuters witness said, as the final remnants of the Islamic State group held a narrow strip of land along the Euphrates in a last-ditch defense of its dwindling territory. On Tuesday, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said they had driven the remaining Islamic State fighters in the town of Baghouz from a makeshift encampment that had represented most of its remaining territory.

U.S.-backed Syrian forces on Tuesday seized control of an encampment held by the Islamic State group in eastern Syria, after hundreds of militants surrendered overnight, a spokesman said, signaling the group’s collapse after months of stiff resistance. A group of suspects involved in a January bombing that killed four Americans in northern Syria were among militants captured by the Kurdish-led forces. The taking of the IS camp was a major advance but not the final defeat of the group in Baghouz. Still, fighters from the force were starting to celebrate anyway.

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS/Daesh) launched arguably their last counter-offensive to regain the territory they lost to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the Baghouz area of eastern Deir Ezzor. Backed by nearly 100 women and children, the Islamic State stormed the Syrian Democratic Forces’ positions at the northern flank of the Baghouz Camp in a bid to force the latter to retreat from several areas.

About 20,000 Iraqi refugees, including women and children, are expected to return to their hometowns in weeks under an agreement with the Federal Government of Iraq, a senior official of the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Monday. Over the past few weeks, thousands of people, many of whom were the wives and children of Islamic State members, either surrendered or were taken from the front lines in the battle against the extremist group in Syria. Due to the significant number of civilians, the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had to slow down their advance to liberate...

“Tomorrow, God willing, we will be in paradise and they will be burning in hell,” said an Islamic State member whom the video identified as Abu Abd al-Azeem, whose speech is peppered with Koranic recitations... The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces said on Tuesday the assault to capture the besieged enclave of Baghouz, near the Iraqi border, was as good as over.

Islamic State’s final enclave in eastern Syria was pounded with air strikes and artillery on Monday in a U.S.-backed assault aimed at wiping out the last shred of its territorial rule that once spanned a third of Syria and Iraq... The SDF has held off from a full assault for most of the past few weeks as many thousands of people poured from the enclave, including surrendering fighters, Islamic State supporters, other civilians and some of the group’s captives. By Sunday evening, no more people had come out, prompting the SDF to start its attack.

U.S.-backed fighters are poised to capture Islamic State’s last, tiny enclave on the Euphrates. The remaining militants in a neighborhood of Baghouz village near the Iraqi border, under fire from all sides. Civilians fled the few square miles of hamlets and farmland that remain within Islamic State’s ‘caliphate’, along with defeated jihadists trying to escape unnoticed. Most of the fighters left in Baghouz are foreigners, in an encircled pocket some 700 meters square. Army General Joseph Votel said the end of the territorial caliphate would lead to a more dispersed, harder-to-detect network of fighters waging guerrilla warfare. That should require...