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Falling bombs raised smoke over Islamic State’s last enclave in east Syria yesterday, obscuring the huddle of vehicles and makeshift shelters to which the group’s self-declared “caliphate” has been reduced.
Air strikes and artillery began hitting the area and smoke billowed overhead late in the afternoon as United States-backed forces resumed their weeks-long attack, a Reuters reporter said. After dark, a Kurdish TV channel broadcast live footage showing fires raging and the swift glow of rockets pounding into the enclave accompanied by the sound of intense gunfire.
During an earlier lull in fighting, tiny figures of people still inside were clearly visible walking among hundreds of trucks, cars and minibuses clustered around a few concrete buildings by the bank of the Euphrates.
It is all that remains to Islamic State in the heartland of the territory it seized in 2014, taking advantage of chaos in Iraq and Syria to grab about a third of both countries and eradicating the border between them.
