ShareNEAR BAGHOUZ, Syria: Kurdish-led forces battled militants defending their last village yesterday as operations to flush out the Islamic State group from eastern Syria resumed after several days of humanitarian evacuations. The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces pushed into Baghouz, a tiny hamlet near the Iraqi border where IS fighters have been making a desperate last stand. As the sun rose above the palm trees lining the Euphrates River, the crackle and thud of gunfire and shelling echoed across the countryside while SDF artillery units could be seen taking up positions.
Later yesterday, AFP reporters near the frontline could see thick black smoke rising above the heart of the village, which SDF units approached through outlying farms. "The intense fighting continues," spokesman Adnan Afrin told reporters, adding that eight SDF fighters had been seriously wounded in the first few hours of the battle. "It's closer combat now, the distance between us and the jihadists is gone," he said, explaining that a one kilometer buffer had been maintained in recent days.
The SDF launched a two-pronged assault on IS' last redoubt late on Friday after a week-long exodus that saw thousands of people flee the enclave dried up. While IS fighters, who have been besieged for weeks in an ever-shrinking pocket, are vastly outgunned, their use of tunnels, booby-traps and suicide bombers is hampering the SDF advance. "We can't put a timeframe on this battle - two weeks, three weeks or a week - it will depend on the surprises we get along the way," Afrin said. "Those who have not surrendered by now will meet their fate there," he said.
Most of the more than 50,000 people who left the very last rump of the IS "caliphate" in recent weeks were women and children. Some of the evacuees, however, were suspected fighters either surrendering to the SDF or attempting to slip back into civilian life. The militants are cornered in a bend of the Euphrates, with Syrian government forces and their allies on the west bank of the Euphrates blocking any escape across the river and Iraqi government forces blocking any move downstream.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said seven IS fighters were shot dead by Syrian government forces and allied Iranian militiamen. Only a few dozen people were evacuated by the SDF on Friday in the smallest convoy in days, prompting the Kurdish-led force to close the humanitarian window and resume their offensive.
Meanwhile, the world's chemical weapons watchdog said Friday that chlorine was used against the rebel-held Syrian town of Douma in 2018, in a long-awaited final report on the deadly attack. The report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was based on a visit by inspectors to the site of the attack which witnesses said killed 43 people. Western powers led by the United States blamed the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad for the incident and unleashed air strikes on military installations in response.
The Hague-based watchdog said two cylinders likely containing chlorine smashed into a housing block in the town. The OPCW report said that there were "reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon has taken place on 7 April 2018. This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine." It said however that it found no evidence of the use of nerve agents in Douma, which had been previously alleged by some parties in the conflict.
The findings confirmed an interim OPCW report released last July saying that traces of chlorine were found. The report does not place blame because it was not in the OPCW's remit at the time, although the watchdog has since been given powers to investigate responsibility for all chemical attacks in Syria back to 2014.
Russia, which backs Assad, rejected the report and said the attack was "staged" by Syrian rescue volunteers known as the White Helmets. "In spite of all the evidence presented by Russia, Syria, and even British journalists that the Douma incident is no more than 'White Helmets' staged provocation, Technical Secretariat of OPCW states in today's report that chlorine was used in Douma as a chemical weapon," the Russian Embassy in The Hague tweeted.
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt however said Syria should now honor its 2013 vow to destroy all its chemical weapons, made after 1,400 people were killed in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta in what the UN said was an attack using the nerve agent sarin. "Confirmed today by @OPCW - chemical weapons WERE used in Douma, Syria in April 2018. The Assad regime must cease, declare and destroy its chemical weapon programme. We remain committed to seeking justice for the victims," Hunt tweeted.
France's Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian echoed the comments, calling for "the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime to end and for the perpetrators of such acts to be punished". A team of OPCW inspectors took more than 100 samples from seven sites in Douma when they gained access to the town after being denied access for several weeks. The OPCW said it reached its conclusions based on "witnesses' testimonies, environmental and biomedical samples analysis results, toxicological and ballistic analyses from experts".
The report said "two yellow industrial cylinders dedicated for pressurized gas" were found, one of which had landed on top of the housing block and crashed through it. It said it was "possible that the cylinders were the source of the substances containing reactive chlorine." The OPCW said witnesses told the team there were "43 decedents related to the alleged chemical incident, most of whom were seen in videos and photos strewn on the floor of multiple levels of an apartment building and in front of the same building."
The videos "indicate exposure to an inhalational irritant or toxic substance" and show burns to the eyes and foaming from the mouth, although it could not directly link those to any specific substance. The watchdog also rejected claims by the Syrian regime that the gas came from an alleged rebel chemical weapons facility and storehouse in the area. "From the analysis of the information gathered during the on-site visits to the warehouse and facility suspected of producing chemical weapons, there was no indication of either facility being involved in their manufacture," it said.
The report will now go to the UN Security Council. The OPCW has been at the forefront of investigating chemical attacks during the eight-year Syrian civil war, with investigators previously confirming the use of "chlorine, sulphur mustard, and sarin as chemical weapons" in other incidents. But the watchdog is now riven by political divisions between Russia and the West, particularly over its new powers to attribute blame. A nerve agent attack on a Russian ex-spy in the English city of Salisbury in 2018, which the West blamed on Moscow, has further poisoned relations. - Agencies
