AL-OMAR OIL FIELD BASE, Syria (AP) — More than 300 Islamic State militants surrounded in a tiny area in eastern Syria are refusing to surrender to U.S.-backed Syrian forces and are trying to negotiate an exit, Syrian activists and a person close to the negotiations said Monday.

The development comes amid the Islamic State group’s last stand in the village of Baghouz, where militants are hiding among hundreds of civilians and preventing them from leaving. It also will likely further delay a declaration on IS’ territorial defeat that U.S.-backed Syrian forces were hoping to make last week.

A person familiar with the negotiations said the militants are asking for a corridor to the rebel-held northwestern province of Idlib, and demand that they be allowed to leave along with the evacuated civilians. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the talks, which he described as taking place indirectly.

It was not clear how the current standoff would be resolved.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group that monitors the civil war in Syria, said another request by IS to be evacuated to neighboring Iraq was also rejected. The group said that IS released Sunday 10 SDF fighters it had been holding, adding that it was not clear what, if anything, the extremists would get in return.

From a self-proclaimed caliphate that once spread across much of Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State group has been knocked back to a speck of land in Baghouz in Deir el-Zour province, on the countries’ shared border.

In that tiny patch on the banks of the Euphrates River, the militants are holed up in what SDF officials described as a small tented village, atop a network of tunnels and caves with the civilians — some of them possibly hostages.

The SDF and the coalition have battled to uproot the militants from villages and towns on the eastern banks of the Euphrates since September.

The capture of the last pocket of IS territory in either Syria or Iraq would mark the end of a four-year global campaign to crush the extremist group’s caliphate. It has been a long and destructive battle. In decline since 2016, the militant group was stripped of its self-declared capital of Raqqa, in Syria, in the summer of 2017, leaving behind a destroyed city whose residents are still struggling to return.

The DeirEzzor 24, an activist collective in eastern Syria, said several trucks loaded with food stuff entered IS-held areas in Baghouz in Deir el-Zour on Monday morning. The group also reported that IS released 10 SDF fighters were released Sunday without saying whether the supplies of the food stuff were in return for the release.

DeirEzzor 24 said that the truce reached between IS and the SDF last week has been extended for five more days as of Sunday. It added that in return several trucks loaded with food entered IS-held area on Sunday.

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Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.

Seen the movie the Patriot.

They need to kill every last one of them. Whatever it takes.

Yep...... I'd negotiate an exit for them. An exit straight to hell.

What kind of rockets are these?

Looks like a TOW Missile.

I remember a few times when the russian troops would slice through their esophagus with a serrated knife, the sound and rush of wind sounded like redemption.

no judy chop?

Kill them all, if they let them live they will have to fight them again.

MOAB center mass.

This

Can you elaborate on this? I thought you were AF

I'd send them food all right. Send them pulled pork sandwiches.

Oh, BC didn't you know American Forces and Russian fight together?
On another point, I think the Dem leadership should go over and negotiate peace, Schumer, Obama, Pelosi, Cortez, Hill and Bill, just before any Moab is dropped!

I think this would be a good opportunity to use one of them Daisy Cutter bombs.
Get it all on film.
Good for practice.
Good for some final shock and awe as we pull out of Syria.

Yes!

I’m still trying to figure out who In the AF would be conducting direct assault operations. Ive got some friends in the AF that do some cool stuff but NONE of them do those types of operations.

Careful BC, you trying to wake up the LOCO fan club? They love his fantasies. I wonder who writes his own stuff and if it gets copied from some mercenary magazine? Now if he only had some musclebound dike to post photos of they'd really go crazy.

When I first read one of Loco military post I asked him if he was AF special security service. Because he post things that only someone in Marine Recon, Army Special Forces, Navy Seals or possibly AF special security would encounter in a combat zone. He never did answer. He may have been like me and the mindset of special forces but the PT test results of a ordinary soldier. lol 😆
Son the Army needs mechanics too!

In related news, I read where the stupid chick from Hoover that ran off to join ISIS in Syria, after having been passed around among the men like a beach party joint now says she is sorry and she wants to come home.

Sorry, but I don't think we, as a nation, can ever trust you. How do we know she isn't coming back for a suicide bombing mission?