NEAR BAGHOUZ, Syria: US-backed Syrian forces prepared for another outpouring of civilians and suspected militants Thursday from the remnants of the Daesh group’s “caliphate,” which is teetering on the brink of total collapse.
A fierce assault on the besieged enclave in eastern Syria has sparked an exodus of dust-covered children, veiled women dragging suitcases and disheveled, wounded men from the village of Baghouz.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces are waiting for more survivors to trickle out before dealing what they hope will be a final blow to militants holed-up in a makeshift camp along the banks of the Euphrates.
The SDF was not actively advancing Thursday, out of concern for remaining civilians, but its fighters entered the settlement two days earlier and control a chunk of it, an SDF source said.
Remaining families have been pushed toward the far end of the camp near the river, he said.
More than 7,000 people have exited the enclave over the past three days, mostly women and children.
The operation to smash the last pocket of the “caliphate” that Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi proclaimed in 2014 had resumed on Friday after a long humanitarian pause.
The deluge of fire unleashed by SDF artillery and coalition air strikes at the weekend appears to have taken a toll on the diehard militants and relatives still inside.
Many emerged on Wednesday wounded and using crutches.
One bearded man gripped the handle of a half-full blood bag attached to his body, as he trudged across a field to reach an SDF screening point.
Around him, a solemn procession of bearded men led by armed guards filed slowly toward US-led coalition troops for processing.
Around a tenth of the nearly 58,000 people who have fled the last Daesh bastion since December were militants trying to slip back into civilian life, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor.
They have emerged into the spotlight of the international media for the first time.
Daesh fighters had previously managed to secure passage out of their former strongholds before US-backed forces recaptured the territory.
Remaining militants, however, are now surrounded on all sides, with Syrian government forces and their allies on the west bank of the Euphrates blocking any escape across the river and Iraqi government forces preventing any move downstream.
A senior SDF officer said 400 militants were captured on Tuesday night as they attempted to slip out of Baghouz in an escape he said was organized by a network that had planned to smuggle them to remote hideouts.
While suspected militants are transferred to Kurdish-run detention centers, their relatives are trucked to camps for the displaced further north.
An AFP correspondent on Thursday saw more than 10 truckloads of people leaving an SDF screening point en route to the camps, a day after hundreds steamed out of Baghouz.
Around 4,000 people arrived from Baghouz to the Al-Hol camp on Wednesday, pushing the camp’s population to over 60,000, according to the International Rescue Committee.
Many are wounded or in poor physical shape after living for weeks without much food and hiding from bombs in underground shelters.
“Many of the arrivals are in a very weak condition or have life-changing injuries” Misty Buswell of the IRC said.
“Particularly vulnerable are the many heavily pregnant women as well as mothers with newborns.”
The battle against Daesh is now the main front of the Syrian war, which has claimed more than 360,000 lives since 2011.
The capture of Baghouz would mark the end of Daesh territorial control in the region and deal a death blow to the “caliphate” proclaimed in 2014, which once covered huge swathes of Syria and Iraq.
At its peak more than four years ago, the proto-state created by Daesh was the size of the United Kingdom and administered millions of people.
It effectively collapsed in 2017 when Daesh lost most of its major cities in both countries.
The loss of Baghouz, which the SDF says is only days away, would carry mostly symbolic value.
The group remains a potent force in both Syria and Iraq, where it carries out deadly attacks.
In Syria, it maintains a presence in the vast Badiya desert and has claimed attacks in SDF-held territory.
Syria force braces for new outflux from last Daesh village
Syria force braces for new outflux from last Daesh village
- A fierce assault on the besieged enclave in eastern Syria has sparked an exodus of dust-covered children and veiled women
- Daesh remains a potent force in both Syria and Iraq, where it carries out deadly attacks
Thousands of Libyans gather for the funeral of Qaddafi’s son who was shot and killed this week
- As the funeral procession got underway and the crowds swelled, a small group of supporters took Seif Al-Islam’s coffin away and later performed the funeral prayers and buried him
- Authorities said an initial investigation found that he was shot to death but did not provide further details
BANI WALID, Libya: Thousands converged on Friday in northwestern Libya for the funeral of Seif Al-Islam Qaddafi, the son and one-time heir apparent of Libya’s late leader Muammar Qaddafi, who was killed earlier this week when four masked assailants stormed into his home and fatally shot him.
Mourners carried his coffin in the town of Bani Walid, 146 kilometers (91 miles) southeast of the capital, Tripoli, as well as large photographs of both Seif Al-Islam, who was known mostly by his first name, and his father.
The crowd also waved plain green flags, Libya’s official flag from 1977 to 2011 under Qaddafi, who ruled the country for more than 40 years before being toppled in a NATO-backed popular uprising in 2011. Qaddafi was killed later that year in his hometown of Sirte as fighting in Libya escalated into a full-blown civil war.
As the funeral procession got underway and the crowds swelled, a small group of supporters took Seif Al-Islam’s coffin away and later performed the funeral prayers and buried him.
Attackers at his home
Seif Al-Islam, 53, was killed on Tuesday inside his home in the town of Zintan, 136 kilometers (85 miles) southwest of the capital, Tripoli, according to Libyan’s chief prosecutor’s office.
Authorities said an initial investigation found that he was shot to death but did not provide further details. Seif Al-Islam’s political team later released a statement saying “four masked men” had stormed his house and killed him in a “cowardly and treacherous assassination,” after disabling security cameras.
Seif Al-Islam was captured by fighters in Zintan late in 2011 while trying to flee to neighboring Niger. The fighters released him in June 2017, after one of Libya’s rival governments granted him amnesty.
“The pain of loss weighs heavily on my heart, and it intensifies because I can’t bid him farewell from within my homeland — a pain that words can’t ease,” Seif Al-Islam’s brother Mohamed Qaddafi, who lives in exile outside Libya though his current whereabouts are unknown, wrote on Facebook on Friday.
“But my solace lies in the fact that the loyal sons of the nation are fulfilling their duty and will give him a farewell befitting his stature,” the brother wrote.
Since the uprising that toppled Qaddafi, Libya plunged into chaos during which the oil-rich North African country split, with rival administrations now in the east and west, backed by various armed groups and foreign governments.
Qaddafi’s heir-apparent
Seif Al-Islam was Qaddafi’s second-born son and was seen as the reformist face of the Qaddafi regime — someone with diplomatic outreach who had worked to improve Libya’s relations with Western countries up until the 2011 uprising.
The United Nations imposed sanctions on Seif Al-Islam that included a travel ban and an assets freeze for his inflammatory public statements encouraging violence against anti-Qaddafi protesters during the 2011 uprising. The International Criminal Court later charged him with crimes against humanity related to the 2011 uprising.
In July 2021, Seif Al-Islam told the New York Times that he’s considering returning to Libya’s political scene after a decade of absence during which he observed Middle East politics and reportedly reorganized his father’s political supporters.
He condemned the country’s new leaders. “There’s no life here. Go to the gas station — there’s no diesel,″ Seif Al-Islam told the Times.
In November 2021, he announced his candidacy in the country’s presidential election in a controversial move that was met with outcry from anti-Qaddafi political forces in western and eastern Libya.
The country’s High National Elections Committee disqualified him, but the election wasn’t held over disputes between rival administrations and armed groups.
