Direct Translation via Google Translation. Edited.
Text taken from a post at boosty.to/
[ColonelCassad] The situation in the city of Deir ez-Zor at the beginning of the fighting for Huwayja Katya had changed significantly compared to the beginning of autumn 2017. By this time, the heavy blockade of the Deir ez-Zor garrison, which had lasted three and a half years, had been broken. A key role in the liberation of areas of the city and nearby suburbs was played by a detachment of Russian military specialists, called the Wagner PMC.
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Before the breakthrough to Deir ez-Zor, the “Wagnerites” had already successfully operated in Syria, repelling attacks by IS militants and participating in major military operations - in the assault on Palmyra in 2016 and 2017, as well as in eliminating the center of IS activity in Eastern Hama around the village Akerbat. In September 2017, the “Orchestra” was at the forefront of the offensive to relieve the blockade of Deir ez-Zor - assault units of the “Wagnerites” cleared the M-20 highway, lifted the siege of the city airport and carried out a successful operation to cross the Euphrates River, where they created a strong fire bridgehead, cutting off the Islamists' path to retreat.
By November 2017, IS militants in the areas of Deir ez-Zor that remained under their control found themselves in a catastrophic situation. Unable to continue resistance, large groups of Islamists hastily fled the combat area. Finding themselves completely surrounded, without the opportunity to cross the river, the remaining militants surrendered block by block - including surrendering to the detachments of the Wagner PMC. However, although on November 3, 2017, the terrorists surrendered all areas of Deir ez-Zor, IS militants still had a small trump card in their hands - a support base right in the middle of the Euphrates River delta.
On both sides of the river, the large island of Huwayja Katya, located in the Euphrates River delta north of Deir ez-Zor, remained a stronghold for Islamic State militants throughout the siege of the city. In fact, thanks to control of the island, the Islamists had every chance to retain part of the bed of the great river and use it to carry out painful attacks in the rear of pro-government forces. In addition, due to the favorable location of the island, there were dams across the Euphrates on Huveyja Katya, with the help of which all agricultural irrigation of the region surrounded by sands was carried out.
Thus, in order to restore peaceful life in the province of Deir ez-Zor, it was necessary to clear the island of the presence of IS militants. Moreover, this operation had to be carried out not by Russian aviation, but through an operation to storm the island.
“The military is now teaching this operation - how the storming of the island took place - even in academies, it turns out. The problem was that the balance of forces was generally unclear to us. When we asked [the Syrians] how many enemy forces there were, they told us that they had no idea - maybe there were about 20 people. The spirits sat on the island and did not show activity - at least in relation to the Syrians. And as it turned out later, there were about 300 of them there, if you count them together with those who later surrendered.”
By the time the assault on Huweij Katya began, the Wagner PMC occupied positions on the opposite bank of the Euphrates from the island and did not give the militants the opportunity to escape into the desert. Due to the fact that the island was separated from the Wagner positions by a small water barrier, Russian soldiers at that time could restrain the militants’ actions with the help of sniper fire and mortars, without coming into full contact with the enemy.
This is what a sniper from the Wagner PMC said about the events around the island:
“It turns out that there was a river from 150 to 200 meters away - I climbed with a rifle along the entire bank, looking for positions. It was hard to work there - the greenery was dense, and it was hard to see the spirits behind the greenery. And on our side there was a small mosque with a minaret. I climbed the minaret, climbed straight out from one side - there was a narrow balcony. I got up and looked - there was a path, and two spirits were just walking. He shot, hit one, knocked him down, sat there for 15-20 minutes. I climbed out the window again to look around - and then I found a camp of spirits. Right in the palm of your hand.
The minaret itself is narrow, the rifle is long - it’s inconvenient to shoot, you had to stick the barrel all the way out. I found a rest there, rested my rifle on the lamp, and took a position. I saw one jump out, I fired once. I see a little scent running up to him and starting to fuss. At first, to be honest, I thought that they were looting it - because they were already without food then. I fired again, hitting another target. And during the battle, the excitement grows, and the waiting periods have become much shorter. In short, I ran like this several times - and, apparently, the spirits figured me out. Only I tilt my head - damn it! - a bullet flies right into the window where my head was. There is a pillar in the middle of the minaret, so the bullet entered it. I then aimed a mortar from my position - and ours completely destroyed this camp. Later, when we entered the island, we found this camp, and in this place we counted five different legs.”
TWENTY-EIGHT “WAGNERITES”
Against the backdrop of the surrender of the Deir ez-Zor neighborhoods by IS militants, the question arose about the complete cleansing of the island of Huwayja Katya. The leading role in this operation was given to the assault groups of the Wagner PMC, which had the opportunity to enter the territory of the island and engage in clashes on the ground. According to the participants in the operation, everyone knew very well that the command would transfer them to storm the island and were preparing to meet the enemy:
“Everyone was waiting for the assault, everyone had the most positive moods - that is, there was already a team, they had already joined in, worked, there was a wonderful, cheerful atmosphere."
The first assault on Huweij Katya was scheduled for November 3-4, 2017. It was proposed to storm the island with combined forces: the assault detachments of the Wagner PMC were at the forefront of the offensive, and Syrian soldiers were to occupy the island as the second echelon. However, chance intervened: against the backdrop of the beginning of the offensive on the island, Kurdish militants from the pro-American Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) coalition located upstream of the Euphrates reached an agreement with the Islamists sitting on the island. As a result, almost immediately after the intensification of the fighting, Kurdish forces, on a tip from the IS camp, opened dams on the Euphrates, trying to allow the besieged to escape through the fords to the other side.
“The Kurds wanted to release them, they opened the floodgates so that the spirits could leave. In response, ours raised the water and locked the spirits on the island by raising the water. One detachment was stationed on that side, and another detachment went on the assault.”
The rise in water levels in the Euphrates River led to the fact that the bridges between Huveyja Katya and the eastern bank were washed away. As a result, only one detachment of the Wagner PMC of 28 people remained on the island, which created a primary fire bridgehead in the northern half.
“We arrived at this island, walked through, set out in the morning, and went to it. And when the Kurds raised the dams, all the bridges were swept away. We remained on the island: us and the spirits. There were 28 of us, we even had a joke that said there were 28 “Wagnerites” sitting on the island. When we were thrown there, we had no sleeping bags or anything. We slept on wet ground. The nights were cold - it was already November. After the first night, everyone developed a raw cough. Several times we were already in position to move in order to clear our northern part. But we had to wait."
According to the recollections of the platoon commander of the Wagner PMC, who participated in the first assault on Khuveij Katya, on the first day the assault units were unable to reach the designated line due to the dense enemy defense: “We ran into strong defenses. As soon as we started, they immediately stepped up their strength. And there are thickets, limited visibility - and they have a lot of forces pulled up. There are thickets on the left flank, there are reeds there. In the thickets, visibility is poor, and the spirits constantly flank these thickets, trying to enter the flank. The day was already coming to an end - I think we need to gain a foothold on the unprepared lines. There was no hope of working at night - the spirits were trying to attack our positions. But fortunately, the drone spotted them - we started laying them there with both AGS and large-caliber weapons. And just from the AGS they hit well - with the second salvo, right into the pile where they were gathering. After that, the spirits scattered and did not try to storm our nook again.”
A fighter from the Wagner PMC who took part in the battles on the island also recalled that on the island the militants created a strong network of defensive fortifications that could not be taken at a swoop: “
We were not immediately successful in the assault, since they had good trenches. They did not allow us to advance, and we could not reach them with anything. Then, when they came and looked, they had such good dugouts there. They dug a hole behind the trees, they had a stove there, they slept there - and there was nothing to reach them. On the first day, the acquaintance who called me here caught a bullet directly in the RPK. A bullet hit the receiver, right into the fire translator. The shrapnel crippled his finger, but not badly.”
“THE RUSSIANS WILL NOT STAND ON CEREMONY”
After seven days of fierce fighting, reinforcements from other units of the Wagner PMC approached the bridgehead on Huveyja Katya. These forces were also supposed to participate in the first assault on the island - however, due to rising water levels, they were unable to cross the Euphrates. The soldiers of the “orchestra” who came to the rescue had to wait until the engineering units could establish new crossings across the flooded river. However, even while waiting for the assault, the Russian soldiers were able to find time for small human joys.
“By the time we got through the city, the Kurds had already dumped water and washed away the crossing, it was no longer there. We were accommodated in an unfinished hospital. And only 2 days later we arrived on the island. It so happened that it was the sergeant major’s birthday and he bought a chicken leg in Deir ez-Zor. And here’s the situation: the next day there’s an assault, and we’re barbecuing. It was night, the fire was burning, we had a small tape recorder, and with the platoon we moved everywhere. Music is playing. The platoon commander came and looked at it all: “Guys, I’ll be back in 15 minutes so you can have order here.” Well, we finished cooking the kebabs and after 15 minutes put things in order. The next day we launched an assault.”
In the meantime, reinforcements were preparing to enter the island, which had taken a bridgehead on Huweidzha Katya, a detachment of twenty-eight “Wagnerites” continued to fight closely in the thickets. Due to the large area of the island and the complex landscape, even the “Wagner” equipment located on the bridgehead had to be careful and methodically process the Islamist positions.
“The greenery there was big, there were branchy trees - everything was intertwined, like in the jungle, and you couldn’t get through them, but you had to storm them. I was then in armor, commanding the Bardak (BRDM). But we couldn’t go on armor - otherwise they would immediately burn us. We had to be pulled up by the infantry - they covered us and treated us with DShK. I worked at the AGS, next to me was ZUshka - they worked in pairs and processed there. We were lucky that the spirits on the island did not have “Grads”: if they had, we would have been burned on the very first day. Because the distance was 200... well, a maximum of 300 meters to the spirits.”
Seeing that the units of the Wagner PMC had a firm grip on the bridgehead and were not going to retreat, the IS militants trapped on the island lost their will and were forced to negotiate a surrender.
“Apparently, then the spirits realized that it was futile to resist further. In addition, they learned that the Russians were coming, and, apparently, this played a role. We realized that we would keep hammering them until not a single ISIS member remained on the island. Like, the Russians won’t stand on ceremony.”
AGGRESSIVE NEGOTIATIONS
Over the next few days, negotiations on capitulation and surrender of the island took place between representatives of the Wagner PMC and the militants. According to eyewitnesses, at that moment the militants were trying to take their seriously wounded combatants, as well as their families - women and children - from the island.
However, the negotiations did not always end smoothly: for example, one day, IS militants, under the guise of negotiations, tried to make a breakthrough and fight to leave the island, but fighters from the Wagner PMC quickly stopped this. As it turned out later, the terrorists were offered to surrender, and when they refused, the Russians “reasoned” the militants with the help of artillery.
“It was an interesting moment. Negotiations with spirits were planned. They told everyone on the radio not to open fire if the spirits came to meet them,” one of the fighters recalls this case of “aggressive negotiations.” - A man went through all the positions and said: “Guys, now there will be negotiations. If you see someone, don’t open fire.”
Literally 5 minutes passed - and shooting began from everywhere. At first there were several bursts from the spirits - I don’t know whether the command was via radio communication or not, but large-caliber machine guns began to fire. We were sitting in the green barn, and a tank drove out five meters from us and started shooting – straight volley after volley.”
However, by November 16, the forces of the Wagner PMC agreed with representatives of the militants on the surrender and removal from the territory of the province of Deir ez-Zor. According to eyewitnesses, more than 100 people surrendered on the island, some of them received medical assistance on the spot: by that time, the militants and their family members had been without food for about a month.
“I reached one spirit through a translator and said: “There is an offer, you surrender, we will save your life.” He's in denial. I then say to the artillerymen: “Give them 30 shells, around the island.” Well, they did. I call back: “Well, will you give up?”, they say: “No.” I go out to the artilleryman again: “Give me another 15 there.” I called again and said: “Are you sure you won’t leave there?” The spirits agreed to negotiate. We go out, once, a guy comes out - I don’t remember his name, some Abu, there were two commanders with him. As it turned out, some of the spirits went to Mayadin...
They tell us - let us go, we will give you money, 4 million dollars.
- Bro,
- We need to go to the Kurds.
- No, you won’t go to the Kurds, we’re not even discussing it. I can take you back, and we will level your island with artillery.
As a result, they begin to surrender and take out their weapons. We are inspecting them, we even provided first aid.”
One of the fighters recalls that among the militants at Huweij Katya there were several citizens of the Russian Federation who joined the militants after listening to the speeches of Islamic State propagandists.
“There was one there, and a fellow countryman, from the Kostroma region. I'm from Kostroma myself. There was also some Dagestani there, but I never saw him. I know that there were several other Russian speakers there, but I don’t know how many there were.”
As the Wagnerites testify, many of the militants in the camp committed various crimes, including against women and children. The militants remaining on the island, despite being completely surrounded, continued to carry out bloody executions of civilians, including children:
“We flew over the island, calculated all their moves, looked at the dungeons, that’s all. And I watch one guy, he’s walking with a donkey. He went behind a tree, looked around, and began digging under the tree. He unloaded the sacks from the donkey into the hole, buried them, covered them with branches and left. I called the intelligence chief and gave him the coordinates of the place. That's it, we stormed the island, I forgot about that incident - there was no time for that. Then he went to another direction - he met that intelligence chief.
- Listen, did you dig a hole on the island then?
- Well, yes, they dug it up.
- So what was there?
- Children. Chopped. In bags.
Rare creatures. According to the scout, there were a lot of remains there, a lot of bags. From kids to teenagers. If I hadn’t seen it then, no one would have known that these freaks chopped up the children.”
However, the militants were not limited to the blood of civilians alone - they literally reveled in violence, while being in an absolutely losing position.
“When they surrendered, we were simply shocked by some things. Spirits in general are not people, they are some kind of animals. Her mother gave the five-year-old girl to militants and sold her into sexual slavery. She sold it - and the perfume raped her. Wolves, not people."
“SUICIDE BELTS” UNDERFOOT
After carrying out the procedure for removing militants and members of their families from the island, on November 17, assault troops of the Wagner PMC carried out a complete cleansing of the island. It was this day that would later go down in history as the end of the battles for Deir ez-Zor. According to the recollections of participants in the events, within 24 hours, four platoons of “Wagnerites” combed the entire territory of the island, discovering a huge amount of ammunition left by the militants and unused “suicide belts” filled with explosives.
“There is nothing there except a few buildings and trees. There are many dugouts, some of them died with weapons. There are a lot of suicide bombers’ belts, there are several in each residential area – and this despite the fact that many of them have already been destroyed,” one of the participants in the assault on Khuveij Katya told the author of this article back in 2017. - There is no food or light there. Now the island has been completely cleared and sappers are working on it, examining it for mines, neutralizing belts and destroying the remaining ammunition.”
Another participant in the cleanup, Khuweidzha Katya, also recalls that the number of explosive belts that were not neutralized exceeded all conceivable and inconceivable limits. As it later turned out, all 300 people, including women and children, were left by the leaders of ISIS on the island with one goal - to become suicide bombers.
“We went to the island, stretched out in a chain and wooled the island. They inspected absolutely everything – completely,” said one of the participants in the operation. “They walked in a chain from beginning to end. I walked in the middle of my platoon. On the left was the first, in my opinion, platoon, on the right was the third platoon along with the second. Usually we walked through the bushes, through everything. There was no engineer. They left behind a lot of “suicide belts.” We found everything, destroyed everything, as expected. I also remember that they found a bulletproof vest there, the same as a “suicide belt” made, also stuffed with plastid with destructive elements.”
By the time of the cleansing on November 17, most of the militants had left Khuweidzha Katya, and therefore no one offered any resistance to the Wagner PMC groups. Except for one case, when the two militants remaining on the island tried to attack Russian specialists with the help of “suicide belts.”
“Between us and the fourth platoon, two suicide bombers ran out and blew themselves up. No one was hurt, only one guy was shell-shocked, and everyone was pelted with scraps,” recalled one of the participants in the operation on the island. – There were scraps everywhere: there were olive trees about 100 meters from the explosion site - even on these trees there were scraps of the “martyr” hanging. The largest fragment was a leg with a thigh. At that time, I remember, I also joked: “Look how fat the leg is, but they say that they were starving here while they were surrounded.” Well, the leg really seemed big. It was only later that I learned that a limb, severed from the body, looks much larger than it actually is.”
Another militant, who remained on the island on the orders of his leaders, decided not to end his life as a suicide bomber - and tried to hide among a pile of things in one of the destroyed houses. However, it was discovered by soldiers of the Wagner PMC - moreover, absolutely by accident and not as part of the cleanup, but after its completion.
“We walked all over the island, and it’s cold there at night. We decided to collect some shmurdyak and mattresses from the surrounding mud huts so as not to sleep on the bare ground. We raked up the mattresses and saw that the spirit was lying there. Well, we, the Hyundai Hoch, took him prisoner. He didn’t know that we were looking for blankets and mattresses, so he decided to hide under the mattress and wait. The spirit later said during interrogation that they left five behind. Two “martyrs” were killed, he was captured, but two were never found. Well, maybe they decided to stay and hid in the greenery. ”
VICTORY IS NEAR
The battle for Deir ez-Zor has become an example of the courage and resilience of Russian attack aircraft, as well as an indicator of the strength and capabilities of the Wagner PMC, which came to the aid of a bloodless Syria and managed to stop the expansion of terrorist groups. The results of the battle in the Euphrates Delta predetermined the outcome of the entire anti-terrorist operation in the Syrian Arab Republic: against the backdrop of battles for the center of the province, the Islamic State militants gradually lost other populated areas under Russian air strikes.
As a result, just a month after the victory of the Wagner PMC and the liberation of Deir ez-Zor, the forces of the Islamic State will face a complete military defeat. The denouement of the story came on December 6, 2017. On this day, units of the Syrian army, connecting from Mayadin and Al-Bu Kemal, met on the coast, thereby clearing the last line of the Islamic State on the Euphrates, measuring 11 by 7 kilometers. By that time, IS units, leaving a few suicide bombers against the advancing army units, hastily fled to the eastern bank of the Euphrates - to Hajin, where they clashed with Kurdish forces for another year. On the same day, Russian President Vladimir Putin was informed of the complete military defeat of the Islamic State militants in Syria.
The final battle of the Wagner PMC with the Islamic State militants on the banks of the Euphrates became the culmination of the entire Syrian conflict. The establishment of lasting peace in these regions served as the main marker for the post-war restoration of the Syrian Arab Republic and the transition from the phase of armed confrontation to the establishment of peaceful life in a dilapidated country. And in this transition of bloodless Syria from war to peace, ordinary Russian guys helped, who went to a distant and unknown land under the leadership of Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin.
Ahead of the detachments of the Wagner PMC, fateful and bloody events awaited, in which the will and courage of the Russian “orchestra” were revealed, as well as new achievements and new frontiers on which the “musicians” would have to fight world evil and injustice. We will tell you about all this in the very near future. In the meantime...
“There were a lot of suicide belts.” There were houses there - mud huts, and I remember during the assault I looked into one shed. I saw the ISIS flag, jerked towards it - I think I’ll tear it off, there will be a trophy. I walked half the room, I looked, and under my feet there was a whole layer of “martyr belts” piled up. I think - well, screw this flag, let those who need it most take it.”
Author: Commissioner Yarrick. 
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