OMAR OILFIELD,
Syria: As US-backed forces advanced, 22-year-old Dima Qatran buried one of her
twin babies, then picked up the other and fled the Islamic State group's
crumbling pocket in eastern Syria. Clutching her remaining 11-month-old
daughter, she joined hundreds escaping the last shreds of the extremist group's
"caliphate" near the Iraqi border. She fled through the cold desert
on foot towards territory held by US-backed fighters, where she boarded a truck
to take her to a camp for displaced IS families further north.

"I had
twins," Qatran told AFP on Friday, tears streaming down her face, at a pit
stop along the way. "I buried one, and the second is dying. She has
diarrhoea and keeps vomiting. I can't bear it. My daughter died of cold and
hunger." The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are fighting to expel the
last IS fighters from a few hamlets in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor.
"We slept in the street for 11 days after my home was bombed" in
Baghouz, a village on the front line, she said.

Qatran said she
arrived in Baghouz with her husband's family a year ago after fleeing the town
of Albukamal to the west, which was retaken from IS by Russia-backed regime
forces in late 2017. The young mother said all she wanted was to be reunited
with her husband who works as a cook in Turkey, and claimed to have no
affiliation with IS. "I'm scared of them," she said.

'Just hunger'

Near the Omar
oilfield, women and children - some of whom had faces ravaged by rashes -
descended from the back of a dozen small trucks, caked in dust and visibly
exhausted as the SDF allowed a quick break. A mother dashed down from a
vehicle, rushing her two children out of sight to relieve their bladders, while
others pleaded for food and drink, saying that with the bombardment and siege,
they had not eaten for days. Infants screamed while their mothers did their
best to soothe them.

For days,
hundreds have been fleeing what remains of the so-called "Hajin
pocket" east of the Euphrates River, SDF officials said. According to the
Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor more than 8,000
people have fled since Monday, including around 1,000 militants. Since early
December, some 29,000 people have escaped the fighting, the Observatory said.

Sara Al-Sahar,
32, paced around with her baby trying in vain to pacify him.

He's "hungry
and sick," said the mother of two. "There's no food over there, just
hunger," she said of areas under IS control. "Nothing - not even
nappies." Sahar also insisted she had nothing to do with IS, a claim that
AFP could not immediately verify. "We walked for six hours" in the
desert before reaching SDF-controlled territory, she said.

'Is it far?'

Around 750 people
reached SDF-held territory from IS-held territory on Friday, Mohammed Suleiman
Othman, an official with the Syria Democratic Council said. They included 600
civilians, mostly Iraqis related to IS fighters, he said. But 150 men were
detained on suspicion of belonging to IS, after screening near the frontline.
Fourteen women and their children of various nationalities including from
Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Turkey were ferried off to a special centre
for questioning.

Inside that
center, women sat with their children in a large room. One was changing her
baby, with a nappy improvised from fabric and plastic bags. In a corner,
20-year-old Mariam from Ukraine fed her baby before she wiped her face with her
hands. "I need to rest before I can remember what happened to me,"
she said, speaking in classical Arabic, reluctant to answer any questions.

Near the Omar oil
field, women asked how much longer before they reach the Al-Hol camp in the
northeastern province of Hasakeh. "Is it still far? We're so tired,"
one of them said. Tayyeba, 54, said she escaped with her husband, but the SDF
detained him for questioning. "We fled as the frontlines started getting
closer," she said, wrinkles visible under her black face veil.

Umm Baraa, 20,
said: "The streets are full of people who can't find anywhere to sleep. We
were running from one neighborhood to another." She said her husband - an
IS fighter - died recently in an air strike. "We were all doing so well...
If the frontline hadn't got closer, we wouldn't have left at all," she
said of life under IS. "Now we don't know what awaits us." - AFP