By Ian Birrell In Qamishli, Syria, For The Mail On Sunday
Published: 01:18 GMT, 3 March 2019 | Updated: 01:18 GMT, 3 March 2019
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Thick black smoke rose over the Syrian village of Baghouz yesterday as Western-backed forces advanced on two fronts in an attack they vowed would prove the final assault on Islamic State fighters.
Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) began the assault on Friday night after a pause in fighting to allow thousands of civilians to flee.
Fighters were backed by helicopters and drones as they closed in on the terror group’s last bastion close to the Iraq border.
Desperate IS fighters, many of them foreigners, used booby- traps in a last-ditch attempt to stop the crushing of their self-declared caliphate.
Thick black smoke rose over the Syrian village of Baghouz as Western-backed forces closed in on Islamic State fighters
Mustafa Bali, an SDF spokesman, tweeted yesterday morning that heavy clashes were taking place as its forces advanced. ‘We expect it to be over soon,’ he said.
One SDF commander told The Mail on Sunday there were about 300 IS fighters – including some of its most hardened – still in the besieged area on the banks of the Euphrates river.
‘They are resisting very strongly,’ he said. ‘It is non-stop fighting. Daesh [IS] is using infrared homing devices and mortars. We are making progress but the battle is very fierce and we are not yet inside Baghouz.’
He said his forces held a strong position on a hill by the town, but IS fighters still occupied ‘six or seven’ key points and were relying on a network of ‘fighting tunnels’ burrowed beneath the battlefield.
The SDF fear that IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
