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March 26, 2019
RFI correspondent Catalina Gómez has just returned from Syria where she followed the last week of fighting that ended with the Islamic State group's caliphate. He was one of the few journalists in the world to have had access to the last redoubt that the jihadist group had near the rural town of Baghuz in Syria and which fell into the hands of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) this weekend.
>>> To listen to Catalina Gómez's interview, click on the picture.
RFI: What did you see in what remains of what was the last ISIS camp in Syria?
Catalina Gómez: "This is an area that could be described as a camp for displaced people made lightly, it's tents made of any type of material: wool blankets, any fabric." Under these tents, they had dug holes in which four people remained. families, to protect themselves from bombing.
Then, we can say that the circumstances, the way of life of these people in recent months were absolutely precarious, which is why children are in such bad conditions and because they arrive in civilian camps and that many of them died on the road.
What we have seen is a great devastation. Everything is destroyed and burned. It looks like a car cemetery on fire. All these people – more than sixty thousand people belonging to the Islamic State group, but also civilians who forced them to move to this area – came in these cars and put them as protection for this camp. Nowadays, all these cars are cremated.
What we do not find are dead. Personally, I saw only one corpse in all the trip we did. The final battle took place on Tuesday. From that moment, the soldiers on the ground had already sung the victory, but it took several days to clear some of the tunnels and there was a political problem behind. Thursday, we spent the camp and that day, there was a great smell of death. On Saturday, when the journalists were kidnapped, there was no longer this smell and there were no more deaths. "
What exactly happened to the fighters of the Islamic State group who were there? Some were delivered in the days following the end of this battle …
"Yes, on the last day of the battle, on Tuesday, about 500 people, including many combatants, were delivered from where, according to the Syrian Democratic Forces (FDS), several redoubts remained, hundreds of fighters and their families , Some of them have surrendered in recent days, because we have information, others are in the tunnels, this open field is built of tunnels in the interior.
And the information that continues to come is that the shelling is continuing, trying to finish and close the tunnels that would be in that area. "
The jihadists too who fled to the desert …
"Yes, there are fighters who have fled into the desert because there is Iraq.If you pbad the Euphrates, which is near Baghuz, you will find the government troops of Bashar al-Assad and the Shia militias, the ISF fighters will then try to escape into the desert.In fact, it's very easy, because at the top, it's a vast desert terrain where There is no authority, and even though the US-led coalition aircraft fly over the region, it is quite difficult to control this vast area.
It must also be said that when one starts to climb from Baghuz to the north, one finds a number of cities where many people have embraced the ideology of the IS. They can not belong to them, but they support them. It is very easy for jihadists to dress differently to escape or camouflage themselves as peasants and to enter those areas where they feel protected. "
>>> To listen to Catalina Gómez's interview, click on the picture.
Thousands of jihadists are being held by Kurdish and Arab forces and some 65,000 civilians, including relatives of fighters from the EI group, who fled the last redoubt, are currently being held in an IDP IDP camp. # 39; UN. Who are there and under what conditions? And above all, what will happen to them?
"We have also encountered very difficult circumstances, many of whom are civilians who have been displaced from their homes, but most of them are family members – women and children – linked to the Islamic State. are locked up in protected and guarded camps First, what is most astonishing is the number of children they have had, when the SI started to retreat, and when we talk to these women, very few of them showed serious repentance.
This will be the big challenge for the future: what will they do with these women and how will they take care of these children? Because the conditions are still pretty precarious.
And many of them are strangers …
"There are many foreigners of all nationalities, obviously there are many Europeans, but we also met many people from central Europe, from the former Soviet Union.There were people from Malaysia too, Mongols … The Kurdish authorities, what they repeat, is that they do not know what to do with these people, who need international cooperation because they do not have the conditions to take charge. "
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