{"id":36859,"date":"2019-03-23T00:25:28","date_gmt":"2019-03-23T00:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=36859"},"modified":"2019-03-23T00:25:28","modified_gmt":"2019-03-23T00:25:28","slug":"white-house-all-daesh-held-territory-in-syria-has-been-100-percent-eliminated-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=36859","title":{"rendered":"White House: All Daesh-held territory in Syria has been ‘100 percent eliminated’"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Trump declares all Daesh-held territory eliminated in Syria but SDF continue fighting<\/h2>\n
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\nBAGHOUZ, Syria: Daesh militants in eastern Syria still held out late on Friday, the US-backed militia besieging them said, after US President Donald Trump said the extremist group had lost its last scrap of territory.
\u201cHeavy fighting continues around mount Baghouz right now to finish off whatever remains of Daesh,\u201d said Mustafa Bali, head of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) media office on Twitter.
Trump showed a before-and-after map to reporters to demonstrate the extent of jihadist losses during his presidency. He has said several times in recent weeks that Daesh had lost all its land even though fierce battles persisted.
Two hours before Trump gave a statement declaring the group\u2019s territorial rule over, a Reuters journalist heard two air strikes and saw smoke at Baghouz, where Daesh fighters have been waging a last stand.
Daesh\u2019s loss of Baghouz ends its grip over populated territory in the third of Iraq and Syria it once ruled, but the group remains a threat with fighters operating in cities and remote areas elsewhere and able to mount insurgent attacks.
A US-led coalition has helped the SDF drive Daesh from swathes of northeastern Syria and down the Euphrates since 2015 with air strikes and special forces assistance.<\/p>\n

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Heavy fighting continues around mount #Baghouz<\/a> right now to finish off whatever remains of ISIS. pic.twitter.com\/l6eHLcWM5h<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Mustafa Bali (@mustefabali) March 22, 2019<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

An array of local and international forces \u2014 some of them sworn enemies of each other \u2014 have conducted different campaigns against Daesh during that period, inflicting major defeats on it in 2017 with the capture of Mosul and Raqqa.
\n
\nThe Syrian Ambassador to the UN Bashar Ja\u2019afari told reporters that Daesh was not yet finished in Syria, but that it was the Damascus government backed by Russia and Iran that was genuinely battling it, not the United States.
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\nSome Daesh fighters remain holed up in the central Syrian desert, an area entirely surrounded by the Syrian army.
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\n\u201cHere\u2019s Daesh on Election Day. And here\u2019s Daesh right now,\u201d Trump said, using the acronym for the group, as he displayed the map with the \u2018before\u2019 portion full of red dots and the after map empty.
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\n\u201cYou guys can have the map. Congratulations,\u201d Trump said. \u201cI think it\u2019s about time.\u201d The president has previously displayed a map illustrating the diminution of Daesh.
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\nAlthough he said the \u201cbefore\u201d map showed Daesh\u2019s presence at his election in 2016, the version given to reporters showed it was dated 2014, when the group\u2019s territorial control was at its peak. US-backed forces in Syria and Iraq captured extensive stretches of that territory before Trump\u2019s election.
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\nThe SDF has been battling for weeks to defeat Daesh in Baghouz on the Euphrates riverside at the Iraqi border. This week it announced it had captured a jihadist encampment that represented most of the remaining enclave.
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\nThe last small groups of jihadist fighters had been pushed onto a sliver of the riverbank and the cliffs nearby said the SDF, which holds the area at the top of the cliffs.
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\nBali told Reuters earlier on Friday that SDF fighters had clashed overnight with militants in more than two positions where they were refusing to surrender.
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\nThe jihadists were holed up in what appeared to be caves in a rocky shelf overlooking Baghouz and in trenches by the river, he said. \u201cOur forces are trying to force them to surrender, but so far the clashes are continuing.\u201d
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\nOver the past two months, more than 60,000 people have flooded out of the dwindling pocket on the Euphrates around Baghouz, about half of them civilians including some Daesh captives, the SDF has said.
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\nOf the rest, about 5,000 were surrendering jihadist fighters. The others were supporters or family members of the group. The fighters who refused to surrender to the end were mostly foreigners, the SDF has said.
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\nThe SDF transported most people who left Baghouz to displacement camps in northeast Syria where aid agencies have warned of dire humanitarian conditions.
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\nThe number of people inside the enclave when the assault on it began in January was unexpectedly large, adding to the difficulties at the displacement camps and repeatedly delaying a final offensive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump declares all Daesh-held territory eliminated in Syria but SDF continue fighting BAGHOUZ, Syria: Daesh militants in eastern Syria still held out late on Friday, the US-backed militia besieging them said, after US President Donald Trump said the extremist group had lost its last scrap of territory.\u201cHeavy fighting continues around mount Baghouz right now to…<\/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-36859","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\/36859","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=36859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}