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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
World

500 people including ISIS fighters flee final stronghold in Syria amid military assault

Military assaults on the Islamic State’s last stronghold in Syria forced more than 500 people including 150 ISIS fighters to surrender and flee.

A Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) official said some 500 people had fled the village of Baghouz and its surrounding areas with 200 more set to follow.

Around 150 of these are said to have been IS fighters and SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali said the battle to retake Baghouz was "going to be over soon."

An offensive on Baghouz resumed by the US-backed group last Friday after a two-week break to allow for the evacuation of civilians.

A member of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) stands guard on top of a building during shelling on the Islamic State group's last holdout of Baghouz

The evacuations come despite the attacks being reduced due to a number of civilians held as human shields, Mr Bali said.

A statement from the Kurdish-led forces said: "In order not to harm them, we are advancing slowly but we assert that the battle of Baghouz will end in a short period of time.”

Retaking the land in Syria would be a milestone in the devastating four-year campaign to end IS' self-proclaimed "caliphate".

The SDF shelled the area of Baghouz on Sunday

This once straddled a vast territory across both Syria and Iraq and the extremist group continues to be a threat.

It has sleeper cells in scattered desert pockets along the porous border between the two countries.

IS militants have been battling to their last piece of land in eastern Syria, deploying snipers and guided missiles as well as using dug-out tunnels for surprise attacks.

Those left in the IS-held area on Monday are thought to include people from Bosnia, Turkestan, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Syria and a man who claims he's French

Black smoke billowed over the area after airstrikes hit several targets on Sunday.

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