The West

The SDF forces have finished mopping up the Al-Baghouz area from the presence of ISIS operatives. In the Idlib area, exchanges of fire continue between the Syrian army and the Headquarters for the Liberation of Al-Sham and other jihadi organizations. In the Al-Sukhnah area, ISIS released a video showing the bodies of two Russian officers and a captive Syrian soldier. The video apparently shows the aftermath of an ambush set by ISIS operatives for a Syrian-Russian convoy on the road leading from Al-Sukhnah to Deir ez-Zor (March 17, 2019). Read more...

Even after the fall of ISIS’s “pocket” in the Al-Baghouz region, SDF forces continue to mop up the village and the surrounding area. In the meantime, ISIS continues to carry out acts of terrorism and guerrilla warfare in the Syrian arena. The Syrian army and the security forces of the SDF are employing counterterrorism measures against ISIS’s guerrilla activity. Read more...

The area of the village of Al-Baghouz fell this week into the hands of the SDF forces, ending the campaign which lasted more than six months to take over ISIS’s control area in the Lower Euphrates Valley. SDF spokesmen announced the destruction of ISIS and the end of ISIS’s control in the last “pocket” of Al-Baghouz. President Trump and senior US officials announced that the United States and its allies had liberated all the areas that had been under ISIS’s control in Syria and Iraq. At the propaganda level, ISIS continues its efforts to address its defeat. The loss of ISIS’s control area in the Lower Euphrates Valley marks the end of a process in which ISIS lost the rest of its control areas in Syria over the past year. Against the backdrop of the fall of ISIS in Syria, the intensive activity of the organization’s provinces throughout the world is salient. Prominent events that took place this week Read more...