Hundreds of people, including women and children, have been evacuated from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group’s (ISIL, also known as ISIS) last holdout in Syria, bringing US-backed forces closer to retaking the last sliver of the “caliphate”.
An official from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said on Thursday that the civilian evacuation is expected to be completed on the same day.
AFP correspondents reported on Wednesday seeing at least 17 trucks carrying men, women and children out of the last patch of ISIL territory in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz.
SDF spokesman Adnan Afrin said most of the hundreds who have left were civilians, but also included ISIL fighters.
“Civilians and fighters from many nationalities have surrendered,” he said, adding that “there was a group of ISIL fighters hidden among the civilians… but as far as we know, our colleagues have arrested them”.
SDF: evacuation of civilians from last ISIL enclave in east #Syria expected to be completed Thursday; we will engage remaining ISIL fighters once evacuation complete
— Zeina Khodr (@ZeinakhodrAljaz) February 21, 2019
‘Deal’?
Backed by US-led coalition air raids, the SDF have trapped ISIL fighters in less than half a square kilometre of Baghouz.
The SDF have slowed their advance in recent days to protect civilians ahead of a final push to defeat ISIL.
“There are still large groups of civilians inside, as well as ISIL fighters,” Adnan said.
Thousands of people – mostly women and children related to ISIL members – have streamed out of Baghouz in the past weeks, but the flow had largely stopped in recent days.
The United Nations on Tuesday said around 200 families, including many women and children, were “reportedly trapped” in Baghouz.
Hundreds of alleged members, including foreigners, have been detained after fleeing the pocket in recent weeks.
At its height, the ISIL “caliphate” spanned an area the size of the United Kingdom, with the armed group imposing their brutal rule on millions.
Beyond Baghouz, ISIL retains a presence in the Badia desert and has claimed deadly attacks in SDF-held areas.
Complicated
After years of battling ISIL, the SDF holds hundreds of foreigners suspected of being ISIL fighters, as well as their family members.
The Kurdish forces have long urged the fighters’ home countries to take them back, but many European nations have been reluctant.
The implosion of the proto-state, which once spanned swaths of Syria and neighbouring Iraq, has left Western nations grappling with how to handle their citizens who left to join ISIL.
US President Donald Trump on Saturday urged European powers to take back hundreds of their citizens who fought for ISIL.
Britain, however, has rebuffed Trump’s appeal and is expected to revoke the citizenship of a teenager who fled London to join ISIL when she was just 15, a lawyer for her family said Tuesday.
Shamima Begum, 19, is being held in a refugee camp in northeast Syria gave birth to her third child on Sunday.
On Wednesday, she said she was shocked by the decision and was considering applying to settle in the Netherlands, the homeland of her husband.
At odds with its demands of other countries, the US said Wednesday it would refuse entry to a US-born ISIL member who wants to return from Syria.
Hoda Muthana, a 24-year-old from Alabama, had also run away to join ISIL and in late 2014 posted a picture of four passports, including an American one, with the caption: “Bonfire soon, no need for these anymore.”
Muthana is among the many hundreds held in camps in northeastern Syria, and she desperately wants to go home. She told The Guardian she had been brainwashed online and “deeply regrets” joining the movement.
However, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that she “does not have any legal basis, no valid US passport, no right to a passport, nor any visa to travel to the United States”.
Syria’s war has killed more than 360,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011 with the repression of anti-government protests.
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