Truckloads of people evacuated from last Islamic State holdout

US-backed forces evacuated over 40 truckloads of people from the Islamic State group’s last Syria redoubt on Monday, as they sought to clear out civilians before a final push to crush the jihadists.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has slowed down its offensive on the final pocket due to the presence of civilians, with just a scrap of the IS “caliphate” remaining from a territory that once spanned Syria and Iraq.

An AFP correspondent saw at least 46 trucks crammed with men, women and children approaching an SDF outpost, 20km north of the jihadist bastion.

One vehicle was packed with women clad in black and men who covered their faces. Wounded people were also among the latest evacuees.

Holdout IS fighters and civilians, mostly relatives of jihadists, are trapped inside less than half a square kilometre in the village of Baghouz near the Iraqi border.

The Kurdish-led SDF evacuated nearly 5,000 men, women and children from the jihadist redoubt on Wednesday and Friday, but none over the weekend.

Earlier on Monday, SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali, said thousands remained inside the IS pocket.

“According to what we heard from those who have left, there are nearly 5,000 people still inside,” Bali said.

At the SDF screening point outside the village, SDF fighters expressed hopes Monday’s arrivals would be the last.

“We want it to be over,” one of them, 29-year-old Mazloum, said.

“Every day we say today is the day but we hope it will all end today and not tomorrow,” he said.

Kurdish foreign affairs official Abdel Karim Omar said the SDF would announce the end of the IS proto-state “in the next few days”.

“But this does not mean that we have eliminated terrorism, which must be eradicated at the roots,” he said.

Beyond Baghouz, IS still has thousands of fighters and sleeper cells across several countries.

In Syria, it retains a presence in the vast Badia desert, and the jihadists have claimed deadly attacks in SDF-held territory.

‘Jihadist threat remains high’

Iraq’s President Barham Saleh warned Monday the jihadist threat remains high, despite gains made against IS over the past year.

“We’ve seen in the past that the mission is yet to be accomplished,” Saleh said in a Paris speech, evoking the infamous 2003 Iraq claim by former US president George W. Bush.

“You have many, many extremists in many pockets in Syria, causing a potent threat to Syria, Iraq and the Western world,” he said.

Thousands of suspected IS fighters have attempted to blend in with civilians fleeing the crumbling “caliphate”.

According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, around 46,000 people, including thousands of jihadists, have streamed out of the Baghouz pocket since early December.

The SDF screens those exiting at an outpost outside the village to weed out potential IS fighters.

After being vetted, women, children, and men not suspected of belonging to the extremist group are transported north to the Kurdish-run camp of Al-Hol, while suspected jihadists are sent to SDF-held detention centres.

“The international community is not currently taking responsibility towards the large number of people leaving the last IS pocket, especially children,” said Omar, describing Al-Hol as overwhelmed by the arrivals.

At least 78 people, mostly children, have died on the way to the camp or shortly after arriving in recent weeks, according to the International Rescue Committee.

The Observatory on Monday said 1,400 people, mainly IS relatives, were secretly transported from orchards on the outskirts of Baghouz to neighbouring Iraq during the past 24 hours.

Kurdish foreign affairs official did not confirm the transfer, but denied the SDF was responsible.

“In principle, we do not hand over any person passing through our territories to Iraqi authorities or any other party,” Omar said.

Such transfers can only happen if they were trucked from Baghouz “by another party”, he explained, without specifying.

Baghdad on Sunday said the SDF have transferred 280 Iraqi nationals accused of fighting alongside IS to Iraqi authorities.

The Iraqi president said Monday his country’s courts would prosecute 13 suspected French jihadists, who were turned over to Iraq after being captured by the SDF.

Source: Truckloads of people evacuated from last Islamic State holdout, International, Phnom Penh Post