Clashes have erupted on the Syrian-Iraqi border between Daesh militants and Iraqi paramilitary fighters as the terrorist group defends its last stronghold in the region, a Syria monitoring group and an Iraqi official said Saturday.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the clashes started late Friday and continued into Saturday. The Observatory said that Daesh militants inside Syria repelled an attack by Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), the paramilitary group of mostly Shiite fighters within the Iraqi security forces. The Observatory said the attack took place near the border town of Bu Kamal but that the PMF fighters crossed back into Iraq.
Jaafar Al-Husseini, a spokesman for Iraq’s Kataeb Hezbollah, a group within the PMF, told the Associated Press (AP) his forces clashed with Daesh just meters from the border with Syria. He said his forces also fired rockets inside Syria from Qaim, the Iraqi border town reclaimed from IS Friday.
But Al-Husseini said his fighters did not cross into Syria. He said forces from Iraqi militias were already fighting in Syria alongside the Syrian government and other Iran-supported militias to reclaim the last stronghold of the group and secure the road between Iraq and Syria, all the way to Lebanon.
He said his forces are building berms along the border to prevent militants from sneaking back.
On Friday, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi proclaimed victory in retaking the town of Al-Qaim on the border, the militants’ last significant urban area in Iraq.
Al-Husseini said the PMF will participate in the liberation of Bu Kamal and will head north to protect the borders and secure the road from Iran to Lebanon.
The US-led coalition said anti-Daesh forces would hunt down jihadists to the last one.
“The coalition must and will deny IS (another name for Daesh) safe haven in Iraq and Syria,” spokesman Ryan Dillon told AFP.
As their dream of a state continues to disintegrate, surviving militants are expected to hide in the desert area straddling the border and go dark for some time.
The group has retained its capacity to carry out suicide bombings in cities such as Damascus and Baghdad, as well as to inspire high-profile attacks in the West such as this week’s Manhattan truck attack.
Despite its defeats on the battlefield, analysts are warning that Daesh is not down and out in the absence of a political vision to ensure stability in Iraq and Syria.
“This absence of a long-term strategy leaves Daesh a lot of room for regrouping in the near future, while continuing to work its networks of supporters around the world,” said Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor at Sciences Po university in Paris