More than 6,500 civilians have fled Baghouz, the Islamic State (IS) group’s final enclave in eastern Syria, since Tuesday. Among them were some 200 IS fighters, according to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia currently facing down the militant group (AFP)
Daily Beast: The Obliteration of Baghouz: How Many People Died in the Last Stronghold of ISIS?
It is clear the U.S.-led coalition vastly underestimated the number of civilians trapped with ISIS in its last Syrian redoubt.
Their images are by now well known: the thousands of women and children who emerged from ISIS’s last stronghold, now housed in the al Hol detention camp in Northwest Syria. According to Kurdish forces, these are the wives and children of foreign fighters, and their future hangs in the balance.
Yet out of the town of al Baghouz from which they staggered—a town which the U.S.-led Coalition effectively destroyed—also came an estimated 60,000 Iraqi and Syrian women and children, survivors of the last battle of a five year air and ground campaign to obliterate the so-called Islamic State as a territorial entity.
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WNU Editor: There will be an investigation and accounting one day, but not today. When the fighting has stopped and Syria is stable and rebuilt, that is probably when a more thorough investigation and report will be made on what happened in the Baghouz.
