‘Waves’ of People Continue to Leave Tiny ISIS Enclave in Syria

On Monday and Tuesday, over 7,000 people left the ISIS-held fragment of the tiny village of Baghouz, Syria. This raised a lot of eyebrows, because there was no suggestion that there were anywhere near that many left in that enclave, and even after the exodus US-backed Kurds suggested that there were still many more.

Thousands more have come out of the enclave since then, and wave after wave of mostly civilians continue to pour out with no end in sight. The US-backed Kurdish SDF says they believe there may well be “thousands” of people still left within.

All of this suggests that the amount of territory being talked about is vastly understated by the SDF, as more people have now fled a little bit of farmland inside a small village than were ever believed to have lived in that village in the first place.

There isn’t any really sign of any fighting anymore in Baghouz, either. While the SDF keeps predicting a huge battle once all of the civilians are evacuated, that seemingly endless number of civilians shows no sign of being close to finished.