Daesh in Last Stand to Defend Dying «Caliphate»

By Staff, Agencies

Diehard militants have blocked roads out of the last scrap of their Wahhabi Daesh [Arabic acronym for “ISIS” / “ISIL”] “caliphate” in Syria, US-backed forces fighting them said Sunday, preventing hundreds of civilians from fleeing.

Daesh has lost all of its proto-state except a tiny patch of less than half a square kilometer in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border.

Near the front line in the village of Baghouz, the sound of outgoing mortar rounds punctured the otherwise quiet afternoon, an AFP correspondent there said.

There were a few bursts of gunfire from the Baghouz skyline and the thick whir of warplanes overhead.

Earlier Sunday, SDF spokesman Mustefa Bali said Daesh had blocked roads out of its holdout, preventing up to 2,000 civilians from escaping.

“Daesh has sealed off all the streets,” he said.

Thousands of people have streamed out of the so-called “Baghouz pocket” in recent weeks, but at a collection point for new arrivals Sunday, dozens of tents and a few trucks sat empty.

“It’s been two days since anyone came out,” an SDF fighter told AFP.

After years of fighting Daesh, the SDF hold hundreds of foreigners accused of fighting for the group, as well as related women and children.

Syria’s Kurds have repeatedly called for their countries of origin to take them back, but these nations have been reluctant.

The issue has taken on greater urgency, however, amid fears of a security vacuum since Trump’s shock announcement in December that US troops would withdraw.

“The United States is asking Britain, France, Germany and other European allies to take back over 800 ISIS fighters that we captured in Syria and put them on trial,” Trump said in a tweet.

Otherwise, “we will be forced to release them. The US does not want to watch as these ISIS fighters permeate Europe, which is where they are expected to go.”

Trump’s tweet prompted a reaction from Paris, Brussels and Berlin.

In Syria, “it is the Kurds who hold them [the French militants] and we have every confidence in their ability to keep them detained,” French junior Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said.

If they return, “they will all be tried, and incarcerated,” he said, after France this month opened the door to bringing back its citizens.

In Belgium, Justice Minister Koen Geens called for a collective “European solution” that carries the least security risks.