Syria force evacuates families before final assault on IS

US-backed forces in eastern Syria are scrambled to extract more families from the last dreg of the “caliphate” before delivering a final blow to holdout jihadists.

Several thousand people — fighters and their relatives — are believed to be holed up in Baghouz, the last pocket of territory controlled by the Islamic State group, barely half a square kilometer near the Iraqi border.

Nearly five years after IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ascended a pulpit in a mosque in Mosul calling on Muslims to join the newly proclaimed “caliphate,” the so-called Islamic State is only days away from dying in a tiny village few Syrians had ever heard of until recently.

— AFP