Date: Feb 20, 2019 Source: The Daily Star Airstrikes hit Daesh pocket as Syrian fighters press the attack NEAR BAGHOUZ, Syria: Airstrikes targeted Daesh’s (ISIS) last pocket in eastern Syria late Tuesday as U.S.-backed fighters pressed for a victory that would bring the militants’ self-proclaimed caliphate to its bloody end. Dozens of trucks earlier headed toward Baghouz, a village located on the banks of the Euphrates at the Iraqi border where hundreds of Daesh militants were making their last stand. They were going to evacuate the remaining civilians, a source in the Syrian Democratic Forces militia said, a crucial step towards taking control of the area. Daesh’s defeat in Baghouz would herald the final collapse of a project declared in 2014, when their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi stood in a Mosul pulpit to declare himself caliph, claiming sovereignty over all Muslim people and land. As in other places they have defended in the Middle East, the militants in Baghouz have sheltered among civilians to escape the worst of intense U.S.-led airstrikes that razed much of their former strongholds of Mosul and Raqqa. A spokesman for the SDF that is spearheading the fight against Daesh said a military operation aimed at ousting the extremists from the enclave will begin if they don’t surrender. Such an operation would take place after separating or evacuating civilians from the militants, estimated to be about 300 combatants, Mustafa Bali said. “We are working on either separating the civilians or evacuating them and raiding the place,” Bali told the Associated Press. His comments came as there appeared to be an easing in the standoff and as an evacuation of civilians appeared to be resuming a week after it had stopped when the militants closed all the roads. AP journalists saw dozens of trucks moving to the tip of a humanitarian corridor used in past weeks. That corridor had been deserted for the last week after thousands fled through it. About 40 civilians, including a French woman, left the enclave Tuesday morning, apparently after paying smugglers, said a member of the Free Burma Rangers, a volunteer medical group. By sundown, there was no sign of any civilians coming out. On the other side of the Daesh-held pocket, an airstrike was launched by the U.S.-led coalition. An SDF commander, Zana Amedi, said that his group made a final warning to remaining Daesh militants to surrender. In a Twitter post, he said most of them are seriously wounded or sick. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that about 50 trucks belonging to the coalition arrived at the outskirts of the area.Adnan Afrin, another SDF commander, said a number of civilians and some militants have turned themselves in, and that the trucks went to the corridor to get them. He reported some clashes on the other side of the enclave between Daesh militants who don’t want to surrender and SDF fighters. In a statement issued in Geneva, U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said the extremists are actively preventing civilians, including women and children, from leaving the area. The official said that she is concerned about the condition of the some 200 families trapped in the enclave - and called for the families’ safe passage out. U.S. Army Gen. Joseph Vote, the head of the U.S. Central Command, told reporters traveling with him in Syria Monday that the SDF was moving cautiously. “They’ve got a lot of civilians in there, they hold some Syrian Democratic Force prisoners and they are using them as human shields,” he said of Daesh. The militants lost most of their territory in 2017 in both Iraq and Syria following separate military campaigns by the SDF and the Iraqi and Syrian governments. However, Daesh has carried out attacks in areas it controls and numerous Western and Middle East officials have said it still poses a threat. It has stepped up guerrilla attacks against the SDF, the militia said Tuesday, with sleeper cells moving “on a daily basis,” the militia’s spokesperson said.