Syria pounds IS village

Kurdish-led forces backed by US warplanes rained artillery fire and air strikes Sunday on besieged and outgunned jihadists making a desperate last stand in a Syrian village. Islamic State group fighters holed up in Baghouz, the last sliver of the once-sprawling “caliphate” that their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed in 2014, responded with small arms fire as the Syrian Democratic Forces advanced.

Reporters near the front line saw explosions lighting up the sky over the eastern Syrian farming village after an airstrike hit an underground ammunition depot. The crackle and thud of gunfire and shelling filled the air, as did plumes of thick black smoke over Baghouz, a small cluster of ruined buildings nestled in a palm-lined bend of the Euphrates. “There are tunnels. We’re not sure how many members of the Islamic State are still inside,” an SDF commander said from a rooftop about 400 metres from the front line. “They are completely besieged.

They have planted many explosive devices in the houses and on the roads,” he said. The jihadists’ last redoubt was said to be about half a square kilometre in size a week ago and it shrank even further with the last few hours of fighting. The SDF had in recent days maintained a buffer of about one kilometre (0.6 miles) between their forces and the holdout jihadists hunkered down in their final bastion. But they resumed their advance on Friday evening after processing what they said was the last batch of civilians, mostly jihadists’ relatives, fleeing the enclave.