U.S-backed Syrian fighters on Sunday were clearing explosives in the last area retaken from the Islamic State group a day after declaring military victory over the extremists and the end of their self-styled caliphate, <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/syrian-fighters-clear-explosives-in-area-retaken-from-is/4845757.html">VOA</a> reports.
A spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces who goes by the nom de guerre Mervan the Brave said Baghuz, the village where the militants made their final stand, is &#8220;full of all kinds of explosives.&#8221; He said SDF forces were clearing the area and have detonated land mines and suicide belts the militants left behind.
A Syrian driver working with NBC News reporters was killed Saturday by an explosive device that went off in a house used as an SDF command post and a media center for journalists covering the fighting in Baghuz.
Noah Oppenheim, the president of NBC News, said in a statement that network employees escaped unharmed. He expressed &#8220;deepest sympathies&#8221; to the driver&#8217;s family and loved ones.
&#8220;We are still gathering information from today&#8217;s events, and are in touch with the driver&#8217;s family to support them however we can,&#8221; he said. It was not immediately clear what caused the explosion.
The victory announced in Baghuz on Saturday marks the end of a devastating five-year campaign by an array of forces to retake territories held by IS in Syria and Iraq.
At its height, IS controlled a sprawling self-declared caliphate the size of Britain that was home to some 8 million people. The campaign against the group came at a staggering cost, with entire neighborhoods and towns destroyed across a swath of Syria and Iraq.
Unknown numbers of fighters and supporters are believed to have gone underground, and the group has continued to carry out insurgent attacks in areas that were liberated months or even years ago.
It&#8217;s not known whether the group&#8217;s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is still alive or where he might be hiding.
&#8220;This is an historic moment, but we cannot be complacent,&#8221; tweeted Maj. Gen. Christopher Ghika, the deputy commander of the U.S.-led coalition against IS.
&#8220;Even without territory, Daesh will continue to pose a threat to the people of Iraq and Syria, as well as to the wider world. The coalition must remain firm in its determination to counter Daesh,&#8221; he said, referring to the extremist group by an Arabic acronym.
Thousands of people, including IS fighters and their family members, left Baghuz in recent weeks and were taken to detention centers and camps for the displaced elsewhere in eastern Syria. The militants were holding hostages and had detained civilians, whose fate remains unknown.

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Syrian Fighters Clear Explosives in Area Retaken from IS

A spokesman for U.S.-backed forces fighting the Islamic State group in Syria says his fighters are in control of an encampment in the village of Baghouz where IS militants have been besieged for months, <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/us-backed-force-says-it-s-in-control-of-is-syria-encampment/4837367.html">VOA</a> reports.
Mustafa Bali, of the Kurdish-led force known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, says clashes however are continuing elsewhere in the village in eastern Syria as IS militants continue to fight back.
Bali says on Twitter on Tuesday that controlling the encampment in Baghouz marks &#8220;significant progress&#8221; in the fight but that it&#8217;s &#8220;not a victory announcement.&#8221;
The area held by IS in Baghouz is the last pocket of territory in Syria controlled by the extremist group, which once held a vast area of Syria and Iraq, calling it an Islamic &#8220;caliphate.&#8221;

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US-backed Force Says It’s in Control of IS Syria Encampment

Clashes and fierce fighting are being reported in northeastern Syria, where U.S.-backed forces say their final assault on the Islamic State terror group enclave of Baghuz is underway, <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/us-backed-forces-launch-final-assault-to-wipe-out-islamic-state-enclave/4822279.html">VOA</a> reports.
A spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces made the announcement on social media Sunday, writing the offensive to wipe out the last remnant of the terror group’s self-declared caliphate resumed at 6 p.m. local time.
Earlier, he tweeted the last chance for any fighters or civilians still holding out in the small path of land on the banks of the Euphrates River to leave had come and gone.
“The timeline that we give it for ISIS to surrender themselves is over,” the SDF’s Mustafa Bali wrote, using an acronym for the terror group.
The SDF is “ready now to start and finish what is left in ISIS hands,” he added.
Officials with both the SDF and the United States are expecting a difficult battle over the collection of tents and wrecked buildings spanning no more than 1.6 square kilometers on the outskirts of the northeastern Syrian town of Baghuz.
They say IS has been using a network of tunnels, caves and trenches to hide and launch counter attacks. They describe the tunnel system as complex, extending possibly for more than two kilometers, and rigged with explosives and booby traps.
There are also questions about how many IS fighters are left to defend the last shred of the terror group’s self-declared caliphate.
In late February, SDF officials estimated that no more than 1,000 people remained the bombed-out farming community on the banks of the Euphrates River, including perhaps 300 of the terror group’s most hardened and devoted fighters.
But as more than 20,000 civilians and fighters have emerged from the area to surrender over the past week, taking advantage of a brief cease-fire, they have been forced to reassess their estimates. Officials now say it is possible thousands of IS fighters are still there, prepared to fight to the death.
“We have been consistently wrong as have our SDF [Syrian Democratic Force] partners on how big this is,” a senior U.S. defense official said Friday.
“The number of civilians coming out of Baghuz has exceeded any prediction of humanitarian actors,” Hedinn Halldorsson, with the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Damascus, told VOA late last week.
Yet as surprising as the numbers have been, U.S. defense officials do not believe it is an accident or a happenstance of the campaign to liberate this part of Syria from IS rule.
“What we are seeing now is not the surrender of ISIS as an organization but a calculated decision,” the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, Gen. Joseph Votel, told U.S. lawmakers Thursday.
He, and other officials, warn IS’ goal is to preserve as much of the group’s capabilities as possible as it completes a transition from an almost traditional army to a clandestine insurgency, counting on every man, woman and child to do their part.
&#8220;The vast majority of these are assessed not to be innocent civilians,&#8221; the senior defense official said of the thousands of stragglers who evacuated Baghuz in recent days.
The prolonged battle to wrest Baghuz from the control of IS has played out as U.S. President Donald trump has repeatedly declared victory over IS and its caliphate.
&#8220;We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,&#8221; he tweeted Dec. 19, 2018, adding in a video released by the White House that &#8220;we have beaten them and we have beaten them badly.&#8221;
Most recently, on February 28, he told troops at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska of the self-declared caliphate’s demise, &#8220;You kept hearing it was 90 percent, 92 percent, the caliphate in Syria. Now it&#8217;s 100 percent.”
&#8220;We have the whole thing,&#8221; he added.
Trump’s national security adviser defended the president’s comments Sunday.
“The president has been, I think, as clear as clear can be when he talks about the defeat of the ISIS territorial caliphate,&#8221; Bolton said told ABC News’ “This Week.” &#8220;He has never said that the elimination of the territorial caliphate means the end of ISIS in total. We know that&#8217;s not the case.”
“We know right now that there are ISIS fighters scattered still around Syria and Iraq and that ISIS itself is growing in other parts of the world,” Bolton added. “The ISIS threat will remain&#8221;
Despite losing administrative control over almost all the land it once held in Syria and Iraq, U.S. defense officials warns IS still has “tens of thousands” of fighters working either as part of sleeper cells or as part of an active, clandestine insurgency.
A series of reports issued starting last year warned IS could have as many as 30,000 followers and fighters in Syria and Iraq, with officials cautioning they remain “well-positioned” to rebuild a physical caliphate.
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