Sporadic clashes with remaining IS militants in Syria

FILE - In this Saturday, Feb. 16, 2019 file photo, U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces fighters take a break as the fight against Islamic State militants continues in the village of Baghouz, Syria. U.S. and Iraqi officials say IS fighters facing defeat in Syria are slipping across the border into Iraq, where they are destabilizing the country’s fragile security. Hundreds -- likely more than 1,000 -- IS fighters have crossed the open, desert border in the past six months, defying a massive operation by U.S., Kurdish, and allied forces to stamp out the remnants of the jihadi group in eastern Syria. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana, File)

AL-OMAR OIL FIELD BASE, Syria – A spokesman for a U.S-backed force fighting the Islamic State group in Syria says intermittent clashes are taking place with the militants remaining in the last speck of IS-held territory in the country's east.

Some 300 IS militants, along with hundreds of civilians believed to be mostly their families, have been under siege for more than a week in the tent camp in the village of Baghouz.

Commanders of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces say the militants are preventing the civilians from leaving.

Spokesman Mustafa Bali says sporadic SDF fire is meant to pressure the militants into allowing the last civilians to leave.

Recapturing Baghouz would mark an end to the territorial rule of the militants' self-declared "caliphate" that once stretched across a third of both Syria and Iraq.