{"id":30994,"date":"2019-01-29T03:23:28","date_gmt":"2019-01-29T03:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30994"},"modified":"2019-01-29T03:23:28","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T03:23:28","slug":"daesh-in-syria-boxed-in-to-shrinking-pocket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30994","title":{"rendered":"Daesh in Syria boxed in to shrinking pocket"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nSOUSA: Kurdish-led fighters pressed their assault against the Daesh group in eastern Syria Monday, boxing the extremists into a tiny last pocket of land along the Euphrates River.
Bad weather and reduced visibility delayed the launch of yet another push to flush out the few hundred die-hard extremists battling to defend the remnants of their once-sprawling \u201ccaliphate.\u201d
With support from a US-led military coalition, the Syrian Democratic Forces are in the final stages of an assault launched more than four months ago against the jihadists\u2019 last bastion.
A dwindling number of Daesh fighters, led mostly by Iraqi commanders, are now defending only a handful of hamlets in the Euphrates Valley, SDF commander Heval Roni said.
\u201cGeographically speaking, there are only four square kilometers left under Daesh control, stretching from Baghouz to the Iraqi border,\u201d he told AFP in the Baghouz area.
\u201cThere are some high-ranking Daesh leaders among them… but we don\u2019t know who exactly,\u201d said Heval Roni, who heads SDF operations in the area.
The SDF is a Kurdish-led force that also includes Arab fighters from the region and which has spearheaded the fight against Daesh\u00a0in Syria since it was formed in 2015.
The commander said he had no information about Daesh\u00a0supremo Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who is believed to still be alive and is the world\u2019s most wanted man.
In an interview to AFP last week, the top commander of the SDF said the battle was winding up but that his forces would need about a month to assert full control over the area and declare victory.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 1,200 extremists and around half as many SDF fighters have been killed since the start of the offensive on September 10.
The Britain-based monitoring group says more than 400 civilians have also perished, many of them killed by coalition air strikes.
The SDF has warned that perilous sweeping operations would follow the conquest of Daesh\u2019s last fixed position in the area.
US President Donald Trump announced in December that he had ordered a complete troop withdrawal from Syria, a move that left the SDF feeling betrayed and exposed to Turkish threats.
Trump justified the decision by claiming that Daesh\u00a0had been defeated, a claim described as premature by most, including by members of his own administration.
The White House\u2019s special envoy to the fight against Daesh\u00a0resigned after the announcement.
The main US partner on the ground in Syria has said that the final demise of the \u201ccaliphate\u201d as a statehood experiment will not eliminate the threat posed by Daesh\u00a0as an armed group.
\u201cThere is no end to IS as an organization. They\u2019ve been trying to finish Al-Qaeda for 20 years and they didn\u2019t manage. It\u2019ll be the same with IS,\u201d said Heval Roni, using an acronym for Daesh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SOUSA: Kurdish-led fighters pressed their assault against the Daesh group in eastern Syria Monday, boxing the extremists into a tiny last pocket of land along the Euphrates River.Bad weather and reduced visibility delayed the launch of yet another push to flush out the few hundred die-hard extremists battling to defend the remnants of their once-sprawling…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":30995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}