Last ISIS redoubt to fall in hours, says Trump

Donald Trump said yesterday the last pocket of the ISIS territory in Syria would be liberated by US-backed forces ‘by tonight’.

Syrian Democratic Forces fighters patrol near Baghouz yesterday. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump said yesterday the last pocket of the Islamic State’s land in Syria would be liberated by US-backed forces “by tonight”.

The US President has previously announced the defeat of the group, but sleeper cells of fighters have re-emerged. With no signs of fighting yesterday, however, the long-running battle to retake the militants’ last outpost in eastern Syria appeared to have reached its conclusion.

“The caliphate is gone as of tonight,” Mr Trump said in a speech at a factory in Lima, Ohio, that ­assembles M1A2 Abrams tanks.

The complete fall of the village of Baghouz would mark the end of Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate, which at its height stretched across large parts of Syria and Iraq. Controlling territory gave it room to launch ­attacks around the world.

During his speech, Mr Trump held up two maps of Syria — one covered in red representing territory held by ISIS when he was elected President in November 2016 and the other that had only a speck of red. “When I took over, it was a mess. They were all over the place — all over Syria and Iraq,” he said pointing at the red territory and sharing a stage with tanks. “And now you look at it, and there’s no red. As of today, this is ISIS, there’s none.”

Last November, Mr Trump claimed ISIS had been defeated and said all the more than 2000 US troops in Syria would be withdrawn, triggering the resignation of defence secretary Jim Mattis. The President has since agreed to keep 400 US troops in Syria.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the Trump administration was preparing to keep 1000 troops in Syria, a report denied by the Pentagon.

For the past four years, US-led forces have waged a destructive campaign against the group. But even after Baghouz’s fall, ISIS maintains a scattered presence and sleeper cells that threaten a continuing insurgency. The militants have been putting up a desperate fight. The battle for Baghouz has dragged on for weeks and the encampment had proven a major battleground, with tents covering foxholes and underground tunnels.

Donald Trump shows the territory lost by ISIS. Picture: AFP

The siege has also been slowed by the unexpectedly large number of civilians in Baghouz, most of them families of ISIS members. Over past weeks, they have been flowing out, exhausted, hungry and often wounded. The sheer number who emerged — nearly 30,000 since early January — took the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces by surprise.

SDF official Ciyager Amed said they were searching for any ISIS militants hiding in tunnels and for landmines in the riverside pocket in Baghouz. The SDF has not yet announced a victory.

SDF soldiers loaded women and children into semi-trailers on the hilltop over Baghouz on Wednesday — a sign that evacuations were still under way. Black smoke was rising from the village.

On Tuesday, the SDF seized control of the encampment held by ISIS after hundreds of militants surrendered overnight, signalling the group’s collapse after months of stiff resistance.

Some of the group’s fighters remain holed up in the central Syrian desert and others have gone underground in Iraqi cities to wage an insurgent campaign to destabilise the government.

The fate of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdad is not known, though the US has said it believes him to be in Iraq.

ISIS supporters and activists were circulating photographs on social media that purportedly show children and women, some alive and some apparently dead, among corpses of fighters after a coalition strike on the encampment. The authenticity of the pictures could not be verified.

AP, Reuters, AFP