Asmar al-Bahr says he saw scores of bodies strewn across ISIL's last encampment in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz and stockpiles of weapons.

Axar.az reports citing Reuters.

However, it was the "suffocating smell of death" that he worries he may never forget.

Bahr is a photographer with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the US-backed group fighting ISIL in Baghouz. He says he went to the village on Tuesday, hours after fierce fighting the night before.

"I talked to several Daesh fighters," he told Al Jazeera on the phone, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, ISIS).
"There were Russians, Swedish, Germans [and others]," Bahr said on Thursday. "Many of them told me that they never surrendered and will come back for the heads of the infidels; some of them said they regretted joining Daesh but just couldn't leave easily so they stayed."

On February 9, the SDF began an operation to wipe out the remnants of ISIL from Baghouz in Deir Az Zor province, the group's final holdout on the Syria-Iraq border.

Since then, ISIL has been said to be near to defeat at any moment, any day, any hour. The operation undertaken this week has pushed ISIL fighters to the tiniest part of the sliver of territory it has been holding on to, SDF says.