Also, you have many thousands of ISIS fighters who are filtered back into the population. You have to bring back water, sewer, electricity to some of these areas that you've basically destroyed. Assuming that the city does fall at some point - days, weeks, whenever it actually comes - what will it mean for Syria? What's the significance?īOWMAN: Well, then it's even more complex, Mary Louise, because then you move on to what's called stabilization. So it could be a few days, but some people say it could be a week or more - or two weeks. So that means you have to kind of work your way in on the ground, building to building - very, very tough fighting. says they're trying to be careful because there are also some 2,000 or so civilians - mostly ISIS family members - women and children still in this village area. And there've been American airstrikes.īut the U.S. And just this morning, the American-led rebel fighters said they killed dozens of these ISIS fighters but also took some casualties on their own. They also have vehicle bombs, fighters in suicide vests. It's less than 2 square miles, but there's estimated 500 or so fighters there very much dug in, in bunkers and tunnels. But somebody told me over the weekend we expect the caliphate to be no more. Is this it?īOWMAN: Well, this appears to be it. KELLY: So what is the latest? It seems like we have been hearing for months that the final battle with ISIS was imminent. NPR's Tom Bowman joins us from the Pentagon with the latest. With them is an unknown number of civilians who are unable to leave or who have chosen to stay. Today what is left of its forces are under siege in the small town of Baghouz in the southeast of Syria. The Islamic State once controlled a territory the size of Great Britain.
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