Calm returned to Baghouz with no sign of fighting on Tuesday morning after footage showed the fierce bombardment, during which ISIS’s final Syrian enclave was targeted with rockets and fires raged inside. The area is the last shred of territory controlled by the jihadists after they were driven from territory in Iraq and Syria over the past four years by an various enemies, including a US-led international coalition. The SDF has been laying siege to Baghouz for weeks but repeatedly postponed its final assault to allow the evacuation of thousands of civilians, including the wives and children of Islamic State fighters.
It resumed the attack on Sunday, backed by coalition air strikes.
Mustafa Bali, head of the SDF media office, said the SDF command had confirmed 38 ISIS fighters had been killed.
Three SDF fighters were killed and 10 wounded, he wrote on Twitter.
The jihadists had fired two rockets, he added, an indication of continued ISIS resistance.
Jets carried out 20 air raids destroying ISIS military vehicles, defensive fortifications, two ammunition stores and a command post.
SDF spokesman Kino Gabriel told al-Hadath TV: “The operation is over, or as good as over, but requires a little more time to be completed practically on the ground.”
Washington does not believe any senior ISIS leaders are in Baghouz, suggesting they have gone elsewhere as part of the group’s shift towards an insurgency, a US defence official has said.
The group still operates in remote territory elsewhere and it is widely assessed that it will continue to represent a potent security threat.
Around 20,000 Iraqis in Syria, including women and children who fled Islamic State’s last enclave, are expected to be sent home in weeks under an agreement with Baghdad, a senior official of the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Monday.
Thousands of people – many of them the wives of ISIS fighters and their children – have streamed out of the besieged enclave at Baghouz over the past weeks, forcing the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to delay an assault to wipe out the last vestige of the jihadists’ territorial rule.
Most people evacuated from the diminishing ISIS territory have been transported to a camp for internally displaced people in al-Hol, in northeastern Syria.
The United Nations (UN) said conditions in the camp, which is designed to accommodate 20,000 people but which now shelters more than 66,000, are “extremely dire”.
Many are Iraqis who had fled after ISIS lost territory in the neighbouring country, fearing retribution from Shi’ite militias.
Fabrizio Carboni, International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) regional director for the Middle East said: “Among the people who reached al-Hol camp you have a significant number of people who are of Iraqi origin.
“Figures are not official but probably we are talking about 20,000 people, including women and children.
“The Iraqi government has expressed its will to bring those people back, but it’s obviously a challenging situation.
“Those people are considered as a security threat, so it means that they will have to go through a screening process.”
The baby of British teenager Shamima Begum, who left to join ISIS when she was a schoolgirl, died last week at al-Roj, another camp nearby.