BAGHOUZ: Veiled women carrying babies and wounded men on crutches hobbled out of the last militant village in eastern Syria on Wednesday after US-backed forces pummelled the besieged enclave.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) leading the assault expected more fighters to surrender with their families in tow before moving deeper in the so-called Islamic State group’s last redoubt.
Bandaged and bedraggled, gaggles of suspected militants in long brown robes limped away from the hellscape of Baghouz across fields of yellow flowers to reach an SDF screening centre.
The tiny village on the banks of the River Euphrates where diehard IS fighters have made a bloody last stand has regurgitated unexplained numbers of people.
Kurdish officers in the SDF and aid groups have voiced their surprise that the flow of evacuees never seemed to dry up after weeks of evacuations.
On Tuesday alone, “3,500 people were evacuated from Daesh-held territory”, said SDF spokesman Mustefa Bali, using an Arabic acronym for IS.
Hundreds more filed out of Baghouz on Wednesday, AFP correspondents on the ground reported.
The deluge of fire unleashed by SDF artillery and coalition air strikes at the weekend appears to have broken the determination of some families.
Syrians, Iraqis and militants who travelled to the “caliphate” from France, Finland and other countries turned themselves in to Kurdish troops.
“There are still lots of people inside,” said Safia, a 24-year-old Belgian woman who was among those trucked out by the SDF on Tuesday, adding that her French husband was still inside.
On Tuesday, the wife of French militant Jean-Michel Clain confirmed her husband had been killed in Baghouz, days after his brother Fabien.
The brothers were featured in a video claiming responsibility for a 2015 shooting rampage in the streets of Paris that remains France’s deadliest ever terrorist attack.
Clain’s widow Dorothee Maquere fled the enclave with her five children said she did not want to return to France.
“I want to be left alone after everything I’ve been through ... some place where I can live, where I won’t be bothered, where I can live my life.”
Those filing out of Baghouz are often weak, after living for weeks with scarce food and hiding from bombs in underground shelters.
The authorities in Kurdish-run camp of Al-Hol and the other camps where evacuees are dispatched are overwhelmed and entire families have had to sleep rough.
“Families arriving in Al-Hol camp have been without access to health and other essential services for a long period of time and ... in a fragile state, compounded by the fatigue of the journey to the camp,” the UN office for human rights said.
Dozens of children are unaccompanied and the toll of those who died shortly after arriving or en route from Baghouz has risen to 90 since December, according to the UN.
The capture of Baghouz would mark the end of IS territorial control in the region and deal a death blow to the “caliphate”, which at its peak more than four years ago was the size of the United Kingdom and ruled millions of people.
Published in Dawn, March 7th, 2019
