US, coalition forces end IS rebellion

At its peak more than four years ago, the Islamic State ruled over millions of people in a patch of territory the size of the United Kingdom.

But the jihadists have been rolled back to just a scrap of land tucked into a bend along the Euphrates River near Syria’s border with Iraq.

Thousands of evacuees coming out of the hemmed in enclave are equally confirming bthe jihadists have been considerably degraded.

The SDF and the US-led coalition pounded the holdout over the weekend, after pausing their offensive for weeks to allow civilians in the bombed-out bastion a chance to leave.

But the Kurdish-led force was forced Sunday to again dial down its push over further fears for civilians still trapped inside the pocket.

“It was horrible. There was bombing, the snipers were firing,” said 55-year-old Umm Yunis, surrounded by a passel of children.

“We tried to dig ourselves in under the tent so that we weren’t hit by the bullets… we were by ourselves,” she said.

She and many of the other women pouring out of the holdout say they and their children were cordoned off from the fighters but were still hit by the massive bombardment.

“It was a disaster,” said another woman, also from Iraq, who refused to give her name.

“Cars were flipped and houses crushed. Children and women in the streets were burned black (by the bombing), honest to God.”

At the collection point, children wandered wide-eyed through a waste-land of rubbish left behind by previous groups of evacuees.

Tens of thousands of civilians have been trucked out in recent weeks from the jihadists’ ever-shrinking territory — in a seemingly never-ending flow of women and children from across the region and the world.

Those who filed out in the past few days said there were still thousands of civilians left, but that the remaining jihadists were prepared to go down fighting.