Hundreds of people on Wednesday boarded trucks leaving the last scrap of the Islamic State group’s “caliphate” in eastern Syria as US-backed forces prepared to deliver the final blow to holdout jihadists.
Several thousand people — fighters and their relatives — are believed to be cornered in the last pocket of Islamic State-held territory, barely half a square kilometer, near the Iraqi border.
Nearly five years since Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ascended a pulpit in a Mosul mosque to urge Muslims to join the newly proclaimed “caliphate,” the proto-state is only days away from dying in a tiny village that until recently few even in Syria had ever heard of.
Photo: AFP
Thousands of its last denizens, many of them women and children, have been pouring out of the riverside hamlet of Baghouz, posing a huge humanitarian challenge for the Kurdish fighters leading the operation.
On Wednesday alone, 15 trucks rumbled out of Baghouz, the fifth such evacuation in a week.
After being screened, the evacuees are sent on to the al-Hol camp further north.
The International Rescue Committee said that “the large numbers of arrivals mean there are estimated to be around 2,000 people currently sleeping rough at the arrivals area, despite the poor weather conditions.”
Survivors of the months-old siege who spill out of the double-trailer trucks tell harrowing tales of starvation. Many need immediate medical attention.
Lines of black-veiled women holding scruffy children and carrying their scant belongings in bags can be seen walking down from a hill near Baghouz and across the arid plain.
Save the Children said many of the surviving children have witnessed horrifying events and are “showing signs of psychological distress.”
A reporter saw that the latest trucks to leave were not as full as in previous days. It was not clear how far this was because fewer people are trapped in the pocket, or because those who remain either cannot leave or want to stay and fight.
The men who leave are carefully screened by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who have spearheaded the battle against the Islamic State group in Syria, with support from a US-led coalition.
Suleiman Mohammad Terbu, a Syrian who walked on crutches because of an injury, said he had been a teacher at an Islamic State-run school.
The militant group ran schools throughout the territories it controlled, indoctrinating boys into its ideology, but Terbu insisted he only taught the Koran, mathematics and sports.
“My family were smuggled out before me, but I couldn’t do that because [Islamic State fighters] don’t let anyone leave,” he said.
The remaining militants — many of them foreign fighters — have also been using civilians as human shields.
Footage captured by the BBC from positions held by Iraqi paramilitary forces across the Euphrates River shows an improvised camp where an apparent militant can be seen running among makeshift tents.
As warplanes fly overhead, a woman is seen collecting water from the river in a plastic jerrycan, while men move stealthily among the jumble of minivans and civilian shelters that make any direct air strike impossible.
The SDF launched its final offensive against Islamic State-held territory in September last year.
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