Date: Feb 19, 2019 Source: The Daily Star Besieged Daesh militants refuse to surrender, ask for exit AL-OMAR OIL FIELD BASE, Syria: More than 300 Daesh (ISIS) militants surrounded in a tiny area in eastern Syria were refusing to surrender to U.S.-backed forces and were trying to negotiate an exit, Syrian activists and a person close to the negotiations said Monday. The extremists are bottled up in the village of Baghouz, where they are hiding among hundreds of civilians and preventing them from leaving. The stalling tactics are likely to further delay a declaration of the end of Daesh’s self-proclaimed “caliphate” that the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces were hoping to make last week. A person familiar with the negotiations said the militants were asking for a corridor to the rebel-held northwestern province of Idlib and demanded they be allowed to leave along with the evacuated civilians. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the talks, which he described as taking place indirectly. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said another request by Daesh to be evacuated to neighboring Iraq was also rejected. Daesh released 10 SDF fighters it had been holding Sunday, but it was not clear what, if anything, the extremists would get in return, the Observatory said. The speck of land in Syria’s remote eastern desert, near the border with Iraq, is all that remains of a self-styled “caliphate” that once sprawled across a third of both countries and included several major towns and cities. In that tiny patch on the banks of the Euphrates River, the militants are holed up in what SDF officials describe as a small tented village atop a network of tunnels and caves. There are civilians inside as well, possibly including hostages. The DeirEzzor 24, an activist collective in eastern Syria, said several trucks loaded with food entered Daesh-held areas in Baghouz Monday. It said the truce reached last week had been extended for five more days as of Sunday. In return, several trucks loaded with food entered the Daesh-held area Sunday, it added. At least 62 people have died in recent weeks, mainly from exhaustion and malnutrition, after making their way out of militant-held territory, the International Rescue Committee said. Spokesman Paul Donohoe said two-thirds were children under the age of 1. He said they either died along the way or soon after arriving at a camp for the displaced. Over 30,000 people who left the last Daesh-held areas have arrived at the Al-Hol camp in Syria’s northern Hassakeh province in the last few weeks, raising the overall population of the camp to almost 42,000. SDF commander Mazloum Kobani called Monday for 1,000-1,500 international forces to remain in Syria to help fight Daesh. He expressed hope that the United States, in particular, would halt plans for a total pullout. His remarks followed talks with senior U.S. generals in Syria. U.S. Army Gen. Joseph Votel, head of Central Command, said after talks with Kobani that he was still carrying out President Donald Trump’s December order for a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces. Meanwhile, European countries gave a cool response to a call by Trump to take back their citizens captured in the fight against Daesh. British Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesman said Monday foreign fighters should be tried “in the region where the crimes had been committed.” Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas warned that it would be “extremely difficult” to organize the repatriation of European nationals from Syria. In France, Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet said the government would stick to its current policy of dealing with fighters on a case-by-case basis. European Union foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini ruled out any EU involvement in the disputes, saying they were a matter for national governments. Elsewhere in Syria, two bomb blasts went off in the northwestern city of Idlib, killing at least 24 people and wounding around 50, Syrian opposition activists and paramedics said. The city of Idlib is controlled by Al-Qaeda-linked Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham militants, who have wide influence in northern Syria.