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US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian forces were dragged into heavy fighting on Sunday with the ultimate goal of defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the last pocket it holds in eastern Syria.
The group invaded vast areas of the country and neighboring Iraq in 2014, but various military offensives have since reduced this territory to an area on the Iraqi border.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed by a US-led coalition, announced a final effort to take over the village of Baghouz late on Saturday.
The announcement comes after a break of over a week to allow some 20,000 civilians to flee, according to the statement. Spokesman of the SDF, Mustafa Bali.
A commander of the SDF said the fighting was continuing on Sunday morning.
"There are heavy clashes at the moment, we have launched an attack and the fighters are advancing," he told the AFP news agency.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a War Monitor based in the UK, Coalition aircraft and artillery shelled ISIL positions.
"The battle is continuing, and there have been fierce clashes this morning with the clearing of anti-personnel mines," said SOHR chief Rami Abdel Rahman.
Backed by airstrikes led by the US-led coalition against ISIL, the Kurdish-Arab alliance has, in recent months, cornered the latest ISIL fighters in a final territory. located in the province of Deir Az Zor, in the east of the country.
Since then, the Kurdish-led alliance has reduced the territory controlled by ISIL to only 4 square kilometers on the eastern banks of the Euphrates.
More than 600 fighters could still stay indoors, most of them foreigners, according to Bali.
American withdrawal
On Saturday, Bali said it was expecting the battle for the last piece of territory held by ISIL to end in a few days.
The group remains however present in the vast desert of Badia in Syria and has claimed a series of lethal attacks by dormant cells in the areas controlled by the SDF.
On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump predicted that ISIL would lose all the territories it once controlled in Iraq and Syria from here "next week".
In December, Trump announced the withdrawal of 2,000 US troops from Syria by surprise, claiming that ISIL had been defeated.
Syrian Kurds have largely remained out of the civil war in the country and have semi-autonomous institutions in the northern and northeastern areas they control.
While the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPGs) have been a key ally of the US in the fight against ISIL, Turkey regards them as "terrorists".
The areas controlled by the SDF represent one-third of the entire country, and Damascus has repeatedly said that it would eventually see them back to government control.
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