Posted on 03/02/2019 10:00:26 AM PST by gandalftb
U.S.-backed forces launched an attack on Friday to evict Islamic State from its last territorial bastion...
The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) removed the last batch of non-combatants and then moved in at 6 p.m. (1600 GMT), said Mustafa Bali, head of the SDF media office.
“Nothing remains in Baghouz except for terrorists. The battle ... will not end until the elimination of Daesh and the liberation of the village,”
“We expect a fierce and heavy battle,” he said, adding that initial fighting involved heavy weapons.
Several hundred people trickled out of the tiny cluster of hamlets and farmland. The majority were women and children, who were searched in the open and separated from the men, who were taken for interrogation.
They bore various nationalities including Russian, Indonesian and Azerbaijani. One woman told Reuters that IS militants still inside Baghouz had dug in and were ready to fight to the death.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
The remaining about 260 ISIS fighters have chosen to fight to the death. They are surrounded by IEDs and mines.
While there are many SDF fighters, American, French and UK Spec Ops are leading the fight in order to closely coordinate with the overhead Apaches.
ISIS has had a lot of time to dig in and create fortified tunnels. We led with 3 strikes to degrade the enemies ammo dumps, which appear to have worked. We have occupied the no-mans land that was allowed to get civilians out.
This will be a grim and desperate fight to dig them out of hardened fighting positions.
Here are overhead photos showing the remaining ISIS position:
http://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/f0ef5d7b-2666-49e8-be24-90784acab0a9
The large number of them still coming out of Baghouz has surprised the US-backed SDF, now surrounding Baghouz.
One woman among them, in the back of a truck, told Kurdistan 24, “My husband is a fighter with the Islamic State. I don’t know if he got out with us,”
“The Islamic State is now in the tunnels,” she said. “We left because God created a reason to get out of here, but the Islamic State will always prevail. Abu Bakr Baghdadi is in the tunnels and they will bring victory.”
She went on to explain, “In the Islamic State in which we were living, we were even satisfied with eating grass.”
As reporters left, the woman and her children shouted, “The Islamic State will remain!”
Wouldn't a MOAB take care of that real quick?
Tunnels? Just run in some carbon monoxide.
“This will be a grim and desperate fight to dig them out of hardened fighting positions. “
wouldn’t it be much safer to just use a few GBU-43/B MOABs to do the digging?
No quarter. No prisoners.
The survivors/civilians/spouses need to be taken to reeducation camps Need to erase the ideology from their souls.
I heard this morning on OAN that the US Army agreed to let hundreds of ISIS troops leave Syria and not bomb anymore for the measly sum of 50 tons of Gold.
That’s be about $5billion... and I know just where to put it
To all, MOABs are difficult to deliver, very expensive and their effect is relatively localized. We would have to pull back from our fighting positions and be unable to exploit the DNA and enemy intel that would be degraded.
The gold recovered only allowed about 2 dozen ISIS leaders to go into detention back in their home countries, mostly Turkey where they will be treated well. ISIS fighters didn’t benefit.
The gold had been stolen from the banks in Mosul and will be returned.
Rather than CO which is hard to concentrate, we could divert water from the Euphates and flood the tunnels like we did in Fallujah.
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