In Syria desert, hundreds flee crumbling IS holdout

Pulse News Agency International by AFP

January 30, 2019 8:37 PM

Red-and-white scarves tied around their eyes, men suspected of belonging to the Islamic State group sit in the back of a pickup truck in the desert of eastern Syria.

A suspected Islamic State (IS) group fighter who fled from the frontline Syrian village of Baghouz, near the Iraqi border, sits blindfolded in the back of a pickup truck after he was taken into custody by SDF forces for screening

US-backed forces have singled them out from hundreds of men fleeing what remains of the extremist group's dwindling bastion on the border with Iraq.

Backed by US-led coalition air strikes, the Syrian Democratic Forces, a grouping of Kurdish and Arab fighters, have advanced against the jihadists, squeezing them into a tiny patch east of the Euphrates River.

The fighting and air strikes have led more than 36,000 people to flee since the start of December, including more than 3,100 suspected jihadist fighters.

On Wednesday, more than 300 men arrived near Omar oil field, where the Kurdish-led SDF separated them into two groups: civilians and suspected jihadists.

The alleged fighters are blindfolded, ushered into the truck and ferried off for questioning by the SDF.

Inside the tent, a few hundred men vetted as civilians sit, some wearing their traditional red-and-white scarfs on their heads.

Most of them sporting the long beard that was compulsory under IS rule, they wait to be trucked to a camp for the displaced in Kurdish-held territory further north.

"All Syrians raise your hands," says an SDF fighter, and just a handful do so.

All the rest, he says, are Iraqis -- mostly from the neighbouring Iraqi province of Anbar.

The men AFP interviewed spoke of a lack of food and medicine inside what remains of the IS pocket, and of bodies lying under rubble in the streets after air strikes.

"There are lots of air strikes," 17-year-old Ashraf Wissam says, adding he lost all his family in the raids.

"The IS fighters are Iraqis, Syrians," says the teenager from the Iraqi city of Fallujah in Anbar.

"We see them in the street, and we run away from them. Any group of people is a target."

Adnan, a 39-year-old Iraqi, says there are still foreigners inside the pocket.

"There are a lot of foreign fighters: Uzbeks, Turks, Russians. There are French, but not many," he says.

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Civilians fleeing fighting in the frontline Syrian village of Baghouz, near the Iraqi border, wait to be screened and registered by SDF forces near Omar oil field in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor AFP

Civilians fleeing from fighting in the frontline Syrian village of Baghouz, near the Iraqi border, sit together as they wait to be screened and registered by SDF forces near Omar oil field in the countryside of Deir Ezzor province AFP

Alleged Islamic State (IS) group fighters after being taken into custody by SDF forces for screening, near the Omar oil field in Syria's Deir Ezzor province on January 30, 2019 AFP

Pulse News Agency International by AFP