{"id":32559,"date":"2019-02-19T23:23:09","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T23:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=32559"},"modified":"2019-02-19T23:23:09","modified_gmt":"2019-02-19T23:23:09","slug":"oic-foreign-ministers-to-meet-in-abu-dhabi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=32559","title":{"rendered":"OIC foreign ministers to meet in Abu Dhabi"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"100\">\n<p>\nOMAR OIL FIELD, SYRIA:\u00a0Militants defending their last dreg of territory in Syria will be \u201ckilled in battle\u201d if they do not surrender, a Kurdish-led force said on Tuesday ahead of a final showdown.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said they are trying to evacuate civilians trapped in the last half-a-square km of Daesh\u2019s once-sprawling \u201ccaliphate\u201d before storming the terrorist holdout.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cWe are working on secluding and evacuating civilians and then we will attack. This could happen soon,\u201d spokesman Mustafa Bali said, declining to provide more details on the operation.<\/p>\n<p>\nDaesh militants \u201chave only two options, either they surrender or they will be killed in battle,\u201d he said. Daesh declared a \u201ccaliphate\u201d across large swathes of Syria and neighboring Iraq in 2014.<\/p>\n<p>\nA small hamlet of buildings in the village of Baghouz is all that is left of the proto-state, which at its height spanned an area the size of the UK.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe UN on Tuesday expressed concern over \u201cthe situation of some 200 families, including many women and children, who are reportedly trapped\u201d in the Daesh holdout.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cMany of them are apparently being actively prevented from leaving by Daesh,\u201d the UN said in a statement. The frontline in Baghouz was quiet on Monday afternoon. Tattered buildings and the twisted skeletons of cars dotted the side of the road.<\/p>\n<p>\nAt the entrance of the village, the SDF had turned an embattled building into a temporary base.<\/p>\n<p>\nThousands of people have streamed out of Daesh turf in recent weeks, but no civilians have made it out in the past three days.<\/p>\n<p>\nThose that managed to escape have been ferried on trucks to Kurdish-held camps for the displaced to the north.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe International Rescue Committee said on Monday that 62 people, mostly children, had died on the way to the Al-Hol camp or shortly after arriving in past weeks.<\/p>\n<p>\nBeyond Baghouz, Daesh still has thousands of fighters and sleeper cells scattered across several countries.<\/p>\n<p>\nIn Syria, it retains a presence in the vast Badia desert, and the terrorists have claimed deadly attacks in SDF-held territory.<\/p>\n<p>\nAn SDF official on Monday said that an announcement will be made this week.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cIn a few days we will announce a great victory over the largest terrorist organization that waged war on the world and wreaked chaos and death everywhere,\u201d Zeidan Al-Assi said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>\nTrucks entered Baghouz to evacuate remaining civilians on Tuesday, Reuters quoted an SDF source as saying. A Reuters witness in a location near Baghouz saw dozens of trucks moving along a road toward the village.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OMAR OIL FIELD, SYRIA:\u00a0Militants defending their last dreg of territory in Syria will be \u201ckilled in battle\u201d if they do not surrender, a Kurdish-led force said on Tuesday ahead of a final showdown. The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said they are trying to evacuate civilians trapped in the last half-a-square km of Daesh\u2019s once-sprawling&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":32560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32559","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\/32559","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=32559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}