Daesh enclave pounded in US-backed assault

BAGHOUZ, Syria — Daesh’s final enclave in eastern Syria was pounded with air strikes and artillery on Monday in a US-backed assault aimed at wiping out the last shred of its territorial rule that once spanned a third of Syria and Iraq.

Fierce clashes could be heard as air strikes and artillery targeted the enclave at Baghouz near the Iraqi border, where the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launched their assault on Sunday, a Reuters journalist in Baghouz said. 

The SDF said earlier its fighters advanced slowly to avoid losses and were encountering sniper fire and landmines. The most hardened Daesh foreign fighters are still holed up inside the area, the SDF has said. 

The defeat of Daesh at Baghouz will mark a milestone in the campaign against the extremist group, ending its control of populated territory in the area straddling Iraq and Syria where it suddenly expanded in 2014 and declared a caliphate.

However, the group still operates in remote territory elsewhere and has shown it will continue to mount a potent security threat, with a string of insurgent attacks in both countries. 

The SDF has made "modest advances" since resuming its assault on Sunday night, killing and wounding many extremist fighters said Adnan Afrin, an SDF commander. 

He said the SDF was advancing slowly because it wanted to complete the campaign with minimal losses.

Daesh fighters attempted four suicide attacks but the SDF captured an arms dump, said Mustafa Bali, head of the SDF media office. One SDF fighter was killed and four wounded. 

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, Daesh 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.

Pro-Syrian government forces hold the opposite bank of the Euphrates across from Baghouz and Iraqi militias are stationed at the border, cutting off any easy escape route for the militants. 

Inside Baghouz, a squalid area of makeshift shelters, garbage and trenches filmed by Reuters TV on Sunday showed the harsh conditions in the ruins of Daesh’s “caliphate”. 

Amid palm trees and scrubby patches of vegetation, rusting cars stood among the bivouacs made by stringing blankets from rope. Oil drums and plastic barrels lay scattered around. 

The SDF has shipped most people fleeing the wreckage of Daesh’s rule over recent weeks to Al Hol in northeast Syria where some 65,000 people now live in a camp that the UN says was built to house 20,000. 

The obdurate support voiced by many of them for Daesh, particularly among foreigners, has posed a complex security, legal and moral challenge for both the SDF and their own governments. 

Those issues were underscored on Friday with the death of the newborn son of Shamima Begum, a British woman who left to join Daesh when she was a schoolgirl.

On Monday, the head of the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF said there were about 3,000 children from 43 countries living in Al Hol, along with many more Syrian and Iraqi children, in “extremely dire conditions”. 

“Since the 1st of January 2019, every single day, a child has died fleeing the fight against ISIS [Daesh],” UNICEF head Geert Cappelaere told a news conference in Beirut.