The battle—which was composed of a series of ground assaults—took place in and around the Syrian town of Al-Baghuz Fawqani in the Middle Euphrates River Valley near the Iraq–Syria border, and was the territorial last stand of the Islamic State (IS) in eastern Syria.

[50][51] After corralling ISIS forces into a densely populated cluster of hamlets and a tent city along the riverside within the first week, the SDF realised that a greater-than-anticipated number of civilians, most of whom were relatives of the what were now mostly foreign IS fighters, were still in the enclave.

With CJTF-OIR oversight, the SDF took an incremental approach to the battle, launching assaults then pausing to allow surrendering fighters, hostages, and families to evacuate in order to minimize civilian casualties.

[58][59] The SDF stated that a number of foreign hostages, including missing British journalist John Cantlie and the kidnapped Italian Jesuit priest Father Paolo Dall'Oglio, were possibly being held in the enclave.

[62] The battle began with a heavy preemptive bombardment throughout the afternoon from SDF mortar teams and U.S. bombers, including B-1B Lancers,[27] with intermittent sniper engagements and machine gun clashes throughout the day.

[64] The SDF reported the deaths of 37 IS members along with the destruction of 19 enemy forward positions, four roads, one mortar piece, one motorbike, and one weapons cache during the preemptive bombardment.

Bali said that the SDF would "fight until the very last minute"; however, American negotiators reportedly stated that safe passage to the Idlib Governorate, dominated by IS's rival Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, was an offer still on the table.

"[71] The Coalition's combat missions continued; Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan stated the SDF were making "significant progress" despite poor weather conditions.

[78] On 12 February, civilians continued to flee on the back of dusty trucks filled with women and children bound for SDF-run refugee camps in northeastern Syria, primarily al-Hawl.

A fleet of 15 vehicles carrying U.S. soldiers was seen reinforcing a secondary front line, meanwhile IS units used ambush tactics and fielded machine guns and anti-tank guided missiles against SDF positions.

[81][82][83] Local eyewitnesses said IS was using trash and tire fires to fill the skyline with thick smoke to complicate Coalition airstrike capabilities and to make the air harder to breathe for SDF troops.

[85][86] Meanwhile, SOHR reported that U.S. officials demanded IS surrender 40 tons of stolen gold the group possessed in exchange for safe-passage to an "undisclosed location" during purported ongoing negotiations.

[89][90] SDF and Coalition personnel singled out fleeing male civilians during processing and were reportedly using retinal scans, fingerprinting, and other biometric data gathering tools when screening them for jihadist ties.

An SDF official said that clearing operations were continuing while the day's fighting mainly took place on the town's northeastern axis where he added that combatants were fielding new "thermal weapons.

"[92] The SDF reported capturing a clinic used for treating IS troops and a weapons cache full of ammo, including 10 mortars, an artillery piece, and a car bomb rigged with explosives on the northeast axis.

[5][95][96] Speaking at the al-Omar oil field staging area on 16 February, SDF commander Jiya Furat stated that IS's remaining territory was reduced to "700 square meters",[note 1] and that a declaration of victory will be announced in "days."

[98] On 19 February, with IS's territory reduced to a small stretch of encircled hamlets comprising a couple hundred square meters, the SDF affirmed their ultimatum to IS: surrender or die in battle.

[101] On 21 February, SOHR reported about 260 mostly foreign IS fighters remained encircled in the farmlands and in nearby tunnels, seemingly preferring to die fighting than surrender to the SDF.

[107] The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) for Syria stated that 9,000 people had evacuated the enclave within the previous 72 hours, 99 percent of which were women and children.

At a screening center 20 kilometers away from Baghuz Fawqani, one Egyptian woman told reporters that IS was preventing men under 40 from quitting the redoubt, including her 27-year-old husband, in expectation of a final battle.

There were few airstrikes in the morning and nothing else after that.” Commander Adnan Afrin said the 1 kilometer buffer zone between front lines had been subsumed in the opening advance; he added that there had so far been no suicide attacks, though some land mines went off.

SDF fighters, perched atop rooftops just hundreds of meters away from the camp, saw "exhausted"-looking IS militants, women and children milling about, yet to surrender even with dozens of evacuation trucks flowing in and out daily.

[149][150] The Baghuz area remained largely quiet on 21 March as cautious clearing operations against mines, booby traps, tunnels, and camouflaged trenches continued; SDF personnel boasted that IS's black standard flags, which "instilled fear" in the populace, no longer flew over the town.

"We will continue fighting with our partners and allies, hunting ISIS wherever they may be," the Pentagon said, attesting to the fact that even after the declaration, IS as a group was not defeated and much of its leadership remained at-large.

Nevertheless, the battle concluded the SDF's multi-year Deir ez-Zor campaign and marked the territorial end of IS's self-declared "caliphate" that once ruled over as many as 8 million people and erased the borders between Iraq and Syria.

The SDF helped transfer tens of thousands of civilians to internally displaced persons camps in northeast Syria while also holding over 1,000 captured IS suspects and their family members as a result of their conquests.

On 7 March, in regards to the evacuations, CENTCOM commander Gen. Joseph Votel stated that he believed that surrendered IS fighters were largely "unrepentant, unbroken and radicalized," and were waiting "for the right time to resurge".

"We will need to maintain a vigilant offensive against this now widely dispersed and disaggregated organization that includes leaders, fighters, facilitators, resources and toxic ideology," he added.

[163] On 23 March, in reaction to the SDF's victory, French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted that "a major danger to our country is now eliminated, yet the threat remains and the fight against terrorist groups must continue.

[169] On 29 April, IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi appeared in a video for the first time in five years, discussing topics concerning the group, including its increasing resurgence in Libya along with the 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings, stating that the attacks were revenge for the events in Baghuz Fawqani.