Donald Trump says US forces ‘killed terrorists behind Paris attacks’ as he declares ISIS will be wiped out in hours
The US President says the final remaining areas controlled by the fanatics will fall by this evening.
DONALD Trump says US forces have killed the ISIS fanatics behind the Paris terror attacks and declared the death cult would be finally wiped out within hours in Syria.
Speaking yesterday, the US President shared a map showing how the so-called caliphate’s territory has been reduced to a tiny spot – which he said “will be gone by tonight”.
Speaking at a tank plant in Ohio, he reportedly told how US forces have killed terrorists responsible for the deaths of four Americans in the Syria bombing, the Paris attacks and the USS Cole attack.
“We killed ’em all,” he said, according to reporters at the press conference.
Trump took to Twitter to share a detailed map showing the sprawling areas in Iraq and Syria where ISIS jihadis had occupied.
“ISIS Caliphate two years ago in red vs. ISIS Caliphate TODAY. (Was even worse in November 2016 before I took office),” he tweeted.
He added: “When I took over it was mess and now on the bottom…there is a tiny spot which will be gone by tonight.
“This is ISIS on my election day and this is ISIS now.”
US-backed forces have seized hundreds of wounded ISIS fighters after the killer cult’s last death camp in Syria collapsed under a non-stop barrage of bullets and bombs.
Hours earlier, the terror group’s media wing released images of its hardened warriors involved in a bloody gun battle with the Syrian Democratic Forces in the enclave.
However, the SDF has now claimed the final wounded militants were being transported from the fallen stronghold at Baghouz to be detained away from the frontline.
TERRORISTS SLAUGHTERED
Last month, US defence officials said a French ISIS operative linked to the deadly 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris was killed in a strike in Syria.
Fabien Clain claimed responsibility for the atrocity in an ISIS audiotape released the day after the attacks.
The 2015 attacks killed 130 people and wounded 494. The attackers, armed with assault rifles and explosives, targeted six locations across the city.
A group of suspects involved in a January bombing that killed four Americans in northern Syria were among militants captured by the Kurdish-led forces.
They were linked to a shocking suicide bombing in the town of Manbij – weeks after Donald Trump declared victory over the terror group.
However, the taking of the encampment, though a massive milestone, is not the final defeat of ISIS in the region, said Mustafa Bali, the spokesman for the SDF.
“This is not a victory announcement, but a significant progress in the fight,” Bali said in a Twitter post.
He said hundreds of wounded and sick militants were captured and have been evacuated to nearby military hospitals for treatment.
HIDDEN CAVES
The ISIS-held village is the last pocket of territory in Syria controlled by the extremist group, which once held a vast area of Syria and Iraq, calling it an Islamic “caliphate.”
Baghouz’s fall would mark the end of the devastating four-year campaign to end ISIS’s hold on any kind of territory, although it maintains scattered presence and sleeper cells in both countries.
The battle for Baghouz including the encampment, a collection of tents covering foxholes and underground tunnels has dragged on for weeks.
The sheer number of people who have emerged, nearly 30,000 since early January according to Kurdish officials, has taken the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces by surprise.
Most have been women and children whose existence in a labyrinth of underground caves and tunnels was unknown to the SDF.
The World Health Organisation said on 106 people, mainly infants, have died since December on the journey from Baghouz to the detention camp at al-Hol, which takes at least six hours.
Many evacuees, particularly foreigners, still express obdurate support for ISIS, posing difficult security, legal and moral questions for their countries of origin.
Those issues were underscored on Friday with the death of the newborn son of Shamima Begum, a British woman who left London to join Islamic State when she was a schoolgirl.
The UK government stripped her of her citizenship on security grounds last month.
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