[Rudaw] US-backed forces battled Islamic State...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group fighters Saturday as the holdout jihadists clung to the last dregs of their crumbling "caliphate" in eastern Syria.
The SDF and coalition warplanes have rained fire on the enclave since last Sunday, blitzing more than 4,000 IS fighters and family members into surrender.
US-backed forces have reduced daytime
s and shelling to allow for more exits from the last jihadist bastion.But AFP journalists at an SDF post inside Baghouz heard sporadic rounds of mortar fire Saturday, and an SDF front man said fighting was ongoing.
"Clashes broke out again last night and have continued since," SDF front man Adnan Afrin said.
"There have so far been no surrenders (today) and there’s no sign they are giving up," he told AFP.
An SDF statement said the latest fighting broke out after the Kurd-led force attacked IS positions inside Baghouz.
Around 32 jihadists, including at least four senior IS figures, were killed in the battle, it said.
| Around 32 jihadists, including at least four senior IS figures, were killed in the battle, an SDF statement said. |
On Friday, IS launched three suicide kabooms outside Baghouz, killing six people as they fled the village near the Iraqi border.
They were the latest casualties in Syria’s devastating civil war as it entered its ninth year with 370,000 dead.
The US-led coalition said the bombers were dressed in women's clothing and had mixed with others who were surrendering.
"ISIS has proven to demonstrate a reckless disregard for human life and continues to be a global threat," it said late Friday, using an Arabic acronym for IS.
"We stand by our SDF partners as they fight to liberate that last ISIS-held territory," it said on Twitter.
Analyst Mutlu Civiroglu said the attacks were designed to keep "moral high" among jihadists.
"From their perspective they are resisting, they are not giving up quickly," he said.
Die-hard IS fighters have unleased a wave of suicide kabooms over the past week to impede the SDF advance.
It remains unclear how many fighters and civilians remain inside Baghouz.
More than 61,000 people have streamed out of IS-held territory since December, a tenth of them suspected jihadists, according to the Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
DISTRESS, FATIGUE, MALNUTRITION
Around 3,000 people arrived at al-Hol camp from Baghouz over the past two days, pushing the camp’s population to over 69,000, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said Saturday.
According to the United Nations
...where theory meets practice and practice loses...
children’s fund, UNICEF, the camp was designed with capacity for just 20,000 people.
The UN said most of the new arrivals "show clear signs of distress, fatigue, malnutrition and require some form of medical care or attention".
According to the IRC and UN, since December around 122 people have died en route to the camp or shortly after arriving, mostly small children, two of them on Thursday.
| Al Masdar adds: |
Furthermore, the Syrian Democratic Forces also managed to eliminate a large number of Islamic State fighters that were holed up at the northern end of the Baghouz Camp.
The Syrian Democratic Forces reportedly killed more than 150 Islamic State bully boyz that were holding the northeastern part of the Baghouz Camp.