The major offensive launched by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on the ISIS' last bastion in eastern Syria entered its fifth day on Wednesday, as exhausted families left the ever-shrinking scrap of land where holdout terrorists have been boxed in by Kurdish-led forces.
Hundreds have fled day and night from Baghouz, near the enclave where die-hard ISIS fighters are making their last stand, as plumes of grey smoke billowed into the sky over the flat, desolate town.
The SDF have built up a pair of sand embankments on a scrubby plateau overlooking Baghouz.
Most of the neighborhoods visible along the hazy horizon are under their control, but the southernmost parts of the small town — from which sounds of a firefight can be heard — are still held by ISIS.
The extremist group declared a cross-border “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq in 2014, but various military campaigns have chipped its territory down to less than four square kilometers (one square mile) on the Iraqi border.
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