Snipers, starvation, and death: The bloodshed never stopped in the onslaught against the last shred of ISIS' 'caliphate'

• The last chunk of territory in ISIS' self-declared "caliphate" was liberated in March, when US-backed forces captured the village of Baghouz in eastern Syria.
• The final weeks of the campaign were a frenzy of bloodshed, as civilians sought refuge and escape from clashes between the terrorist group's last fighters and the forces seeking to destroy them.

AL-HOL CAMP, Syria (Reuters) — Even when US coalition air strikes and artillery paused for people to evacuate during lulls in fighting, the killing did not stop in Islamic State's final enclave.

Snipers in areas controlled by Syria's government near the village of Baghouz picked off women and children fetching water from the river or climbing the small hill to seek medical help in Kurdish-controlled territory, survivors said. People died from their wounds and children starved.

"There were lines of bodies, men, women and children. I didn't count them," said Katrin Aleksandr, a Ukrainian woman who left Baghouz in eastern Syria in the last days of the fighting. She lay in a hospital bed with her head stitched up, two black eyes and shrapnel wounds to her limbs. Her husband, a militant, was killed in the air strike that wounded her.

"Everything was on fire, including tents people lived in," she said.

SEE ALSO: ISIS 'caliphate' is no more — 14 photos of its last days under a US-backed onslaught

Those who lived through the final days of Islamic State's self-declared caliphate said many people had stayed or were trapped in trenches, tunnels and tents in Baghouz. Aleksandr and several other people interviewed by Reuters in camps and hospitals, including supporters and critics of Islamic State, gave separate but similar accounts.

They say bombardment by US-backed forces and sniper fire from Syrian government areas killed scores, if not hundreds, as fighters and families scrabbled over food.

US-backed forces declared last month the full territorial defeat of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Asked about events in Baghouz, the US-led coalition said it uses "stringent methods to ... allow halts to strikes if any civilians would be put in danger," and investigates all reports of civilian casualties. The Syrian government and Shi'ite Muslim militias deny targeting civilians in fighting.