Hundreds of Civilians Are Evacuated From Final Islamic State Enclave in Syria
(BAGHOUZ, Syria) — Young girls and boys stared out of the back of trucks, their faces dirty, their eyes filled with terror, exhaustion and uncertainty, as hundreds of men, women and children were evacuated from the Islamic State group’s last enclave in eastern Syria on Wednesday. The evacuation may signal an imminent end to the territorial rule of the militants self-declared “caliphate” that once stretched across much of Syria and Iraq.
Their condition pointed to the squalor that IS has been reduced to in the tiny tent camp on the banks of the Euphrates River. Food and water have been running out in the pocket, where some 300 IS militants along with hundreds of civilians — believed to be mostly their families — have been under siege for more than a week by U.S.-backed forces. Conditions have been so bad that at least 60 people previously evacuated from the militants’ shrinking territory subsequently died of malnutrition or exhaustion.
The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces surround..