Syria force locked in battle with IS jihadists in holdout village

BAGHOUZ, Syria: US-backed forces battled Islamic State group fighters on Saturday as the holdout jihadists clung to the last dregs of their crumbling "caliphate" in eastern Syria.

For weeks, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have been battling to crush IS fighters cornered in a riverside encampment in the village of Baghouz.

The makeshift camp of tents and tunnels is all that remains of a once-sprawling "caliphate" declared in 2014 over swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

The SDF and coalition warplanes have rained fire on the enclave since last Sunday, blitzing more than 4,000 IS fighters and family members into surrender.

US-backed forces have reduced daytime airstrikes and shelling to allow for more exits from the last jihadist bastion.

But AFP journalists at an SDF post inside Baghouz heard sporadic rounds of mortar fire Saturday, and an SDF spokesman said fighting was ongoing.

"Clashes broke out again last night and have continued since," SDF spokesman Adnan Afrin said.

"There have so far been no surrenders (today) and there’s no sign they are giving up," he told AFP.

An SDF statement said the latest fighting broke out after the Kurd-led force attacked IS positions inside Baghouz.

Around 32 jihadists, including at least four senior IS figures, were killed in the battle, it said.

On Friday, IS launched three suicide attacks outside Baghouz, killing six people as they fled the village near the Iraqi border.

They were the latest casualties in Syria’s devastating civil war as it entered its ninth year with 370,000 dead.

The US-led coalition said the bombers were dressed in women’s clothing and had mixed with others who were surrendering.

"Daesh has proven to demonstrate a reckless disregard for human life and continues to be a global threat," it said late on Friday, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

"We stand by our SDF partners as they fight to liberate that last Daesh-held territory," it said on Twitter.

Analyst Mutlu Civiroglu said the attacks were designed to keep "moral high" among jihadists.

"From their perspective they are resisting, they are not giving up quickly," he said.

Die-hard IS fighters have unleased a wave of suicide bombings over the past week to impede the SDF advance.

It remains unclear how many fighters and civilians remain inside Baghouz.

More than 61,000 people have streamed out of IS-held territory since December, a tenth of them suspected jihadists, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The exodus has sparked a humanitarian crisis in Kurdish-run camps for the displaced further north, where civilians have been transported.

They include the wives and children of alleged foreign jihadists, hundreds of whom are being held by Kurdish forces.