{"id":36231,"date":"2019-03-19T10:23:12","date_gmt":"2019-03-19T10:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=36231"},"modified":"2019-03-19T10:23:12","modified_gmt":"2019-03-19T10:23:12","slug":"sdf-captures-157-militants-mostly-foreigners-in-last-daesh-enclave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=36231","title":{"rendered":"SDF captures 157 militants, mostly foreigners, in last Daesh enclave"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1468946\/middle-east\" readability=\"93\">\n<p>\nBEIRUT: The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have seized full control of a camp where Daesh militants have been holed up in Baghouz near the Iraqi border though the operation is not yet over, an SDF media official said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>\nSome Daesh militants were still confined to a tiny area on the bank of the Euphrates River and had yet to surrender, the official said in a note circulated to journalists. \u201cWe don\u2019t know if they will fight back or not,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n<p>\nSDF fighters besieging the last shred of Daesh territory in eastern Syria said on Tuesday they had captured 157 mostly foreign fighters as they tracked efforts by militants to escape the enclave.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cOur units monitored a group of terrorists, trailed them and captured 157 fully militarily equipped terrorists,\u201d a statement by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia said.<\/p>\n<p>\nDaesh\u2019s Baghouz pocket is tiny,\u00a0crammed with vehicles and makeshift shelters and pummeled at night by artillery and air strikes.<\/p>\n<p>\nIt is the last populated area remaining to Daesh from the third of Syria and Iraq it suddenly seized in 2014 before its cruelties and attacks brought together local and foreign countries to push it back.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe captured militants were \u201cmostly foreign nationals\u201d said Mustafa Bali, head of the SDF\u2019s media office, on Twitter. Neither he nor the SDF statement said when the capture took place.<\/p>\n<p>\nBoth the SDF and the US-led coalition that backs it have said the remaining Daesh militants inside the Baghouz pocket are among its most hardened foreign operatives.<\/p>\n<p>\nOver the past two months, more than 60,000 people have poured out of the group\u2019s dwindling enclave, nearly half of whom were surrendering supporters of Daesh, including some 5,000 fighters.<\/p>\n<p>\nHowever, while the capture of Baghouz will mark a milestone in the battle against Daesh, regional and Western officials say the group will remain a threat.<\/p>\n<p>\nSome of its fighters hold out in the central Syrian desert and others have gone underground in Iraq to stage a series of shootings and kidnappings.<\/p>\n<p>\nNobody knows how many remain inside the last scrap of ground. Reuters footage of the encampment on Monday showed large explosions there and smoke billowing overhead with the sound of gunshots.<\/p>\n<p>\nOn Monday night Daesh released an audio recording of its spokesman, Abi Al-Hassan Al-MuHajjer, saying the group would stay strong.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cDo you think the displacement of the weak and poor out of Baghouz will weaken the Daesh? No,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BEIRUT: The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have seized full control of a camp where Daesh militants have been holed up in Baghouz near the Iraqi border though the operation is not yet over, an SDF media official said on Tuesday. Some Daesh militants were still confined to a tiny area on the bank of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36231","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=36231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}