Middle Orient

Their home countries don’t want them and holding trials in Syria isn’t an option: now suspected foreign terrorists could end up facing tough justice over the border in Iraq.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) began an assault against the final Islamic State enclave in eastern Syria on Saturday, aiming to wipe out the last vestige of the jihadist group’s “caliphate” in the SDF’s area of operations.

U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian forces said Saturday they have launched a final push to defeat the Islamic State group in the last tiny pocket the extremists hold in eastern Syria.

The top US commander in the war against ISIS aligned himself Sunday with the US intelligence community assessment that there are “tens of thousands” of ISIS fighters spread across Syria and Iraq.

U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces say they have recaptured 41 positions held by Islamic State militants as they seek to clear the last enclave the militant group controls in eastern Syria. Mustafa Bali, an SDF spokesman, tweeted Sunday that SDF forces had destroyed fortifications in the Village of Baghuz, but that …

Iraqi armed factions said Thursday they have launched dozens of missiles targeting Daesh militants holed up in a Syrian village across the border. The state-sanctioned Popular Mobilization Forces said they fired 50 missiles at targets in Baghouz village, in the last speck of territory held by the extremists.

Iraq’s Kurdish Peshmerga leaders say ISIL still a threat and US should not withdraw from Syria. A pair of armoured vehicles parked in a corner of the Peshmerga headquarters in northern Iraq form a stark reminder of the threat the region is facing by ISIL.

The Daesh “caliphate” that was once the size of Britain has been reduced to a tiny patch of land near a village in eastern Syria, the anti-Daesh coalition said on Thursday.

US-backed forces in Syria said Wednesday they were detaining foreign Daesh group fighters on a “daily basis,” days after confirming the capture of German militants Martin Lemke.

Any transfers of suspected foreign militants and their relatives out of Syria should be transparent, Human Rights Watch told AFP, as camps in the northeast fill with families of different nationalities.