A spokesman for the US-backed Syrian forces fighting the ISIS group says thousands of people, including militants, have left the last area held by the extremists in Syria.
Mustafa Bali tweeted that about 3,000 came out of the village of Baghouz in eastern Syria on Monday through a humanitarian corridor established by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces for those who want to leave or surrender.
Bali says among those who left was a large number of ISIS fighters who "surrendered to our forces."
The evacuations came as the SDF slowed down their latest push on Baghouz, which resumed last week, to allow civilians to leave the tiny enclave.
It's unclear how many ISIS militants and civilians remain inside.
In a related development, Syrian regime forces have mounted airstrikes against ISIS militants and clashed with them in central Syria, the pro-Damascus al-Watan newspaper reported on Tuesday.
The flare-up in the area of al-Sukhna, between Palymra and Deir Ezzor, on Monday points to the foothold the ultra-hardline group still has west of the Euphrates even as US-backed fighters are poised to seize its last enclave east of the river.
The Syrian air force mounted "a number of airstrikes targeting Daesh movements in the eastern Badiya, specifically on one of the dirt roads leading to the town of al-Sukhna and southeast of the town", al-Watan said, citing a military source.
Daesh is the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
The US-backed forces have been laying siege to Islamic State's last enclave east of the Euphrates, the village of Baghouz, for several weeks.
Some 200 of the militants surrendered in Baghouz after a ferocious battle at the weekend, but around 1,000 may still be holding out, Bali said.
While the group's defeat at Baghouz would mark a milestone in the fight against ISIS, the group is expected to remain an insurgent threat inside Syria and Iraq.
The Syrian army recaptured Sukhna from Islamic State in 2017 as it pushed the jihadists back across central Syria in an advance along the crucial desert highway from Palmyra to Deir al-Zor.
However, some of its fighters remained in the rugged desert areas around and have carried out attacks on regime positions and convoys.
(Bloomberg)
