Battle for Baghouz: White House declares victory over ISIS in Syria, but desperation remains – NBC News

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BAGHOUZ, Syria — The sound of airstrikes and gunfire could be heard near the last enclave of the Islamic State group Friday night, less than an hour after the White House declared victory over the militants.

The battle for Baghouz, the group’s last holdout and all that remained of the vast territory that it once ruled in Syria and Iraq, had dragged on for more than 10 weeks — far longer than either the U.S. military or their allies on the ground had predicted.

Still, President Donald Trump had been teasing the victory for days.

On Friday, the White House said the Department of Defense had declared that the militant group no longer held any territory in Syria. At around the same time, Trump tweeted that there was “nothing to admire” about ISIS.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The militants, meanwhile, have been putting up a desperate fight, and the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces supported by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes have held off declaring victory.

“Heavy fighting continues around mount Baghouz right now to finish off whatever remains of ISIS,” Mustafa Bali, head of the SDF’s media office, announced on Twitter Friday night.

Three U.S. military officials said fighting is still ongoing in Syria, and that there could still be a couple of hundred fighters there in hiding.

Tunnels are of particular concern to the Kurdish-led forces. Dug in fields and under abandoned homes, they provide invaluable hiding places for ISIS militants trying to avoid drone surveillance. The group has used such tunnels to great effect in almost every battle.

Women and children also present a unique challenge. SDF forces have repeatedly paused their offensive, sometimes for weeks at a time, to allow fighters and their families to surrender and leave the camp through a humanitarian corridor.

NBC News recently observed SDF fighters armed with AK-47s talking to ISIS members as women, children and elderly men began hiking along the base of a cliff overlooking Baghouz.

Men walk with others said to be members of the Islamic State as they leave the village of Baghouz.Delil souleiman / AFP – Getty Images file

The people filing out were dirty. Many were visibly injured and limping on makeshift crutches. Others were bleeding and wincing in pain.

A young girl wearing a niqab — a veil worn by the most conservative Muslim women in which, at most, only the eyes show — cried out in pain as a woman carried her along the trail before putting her in a wheelchair. Her jeans were torn, exposing tiny legs streaked with blood.

The sheer number who emerged — almost 30,000 since early January, according to Kurdish officials — have taken the SDF and others by surprise.

A report issued by the United Nations’ population fund, the UNFPA, said Thursday “it is estimated that around 7,000 people are still inside” Baghouz, without elaborating.

When asked in Arabic how many people were left inside the camp, some of the surrendering people responded in a cacophony of foreign languages: Turkish, Uzbek and others that were incomprehensible.

One exhausted-looking elderly man responded that there were “many” people left in the camp, including women and children.

Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/battle-baghouz-white-house-declares-victory-over-isis-syria-desperation-n986246

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