The fight to wrest a desert area in eastern Syria from ISIS will take "much longer than expected," US-backed forces battling the jihadists told AFP on Tuesday.
The reassessment came as the United Nations warned that the fight for Hajin in Syria's eastern province of Deir ez-Zor was having a "devastating" effect on thousands of civilians.
The Syrian Democratic Forces has been locked in clashes for just over a month with ISIS holdouts in Hajin and surrounding villages, but they have been slowed down by harsh weather conditions and a ferocious jihadist fightback.
"The military operations in Hajin will take much longer than expected," said Redur Khalil, a top SDF commander.
"Daesh is benefiting a lot from weather factors, including sandstorms. They've helped it take cover from reconnaissance aircraft and other monitoring mechanisms," he told AFP, using an Arabic acronym for ISIS.
Khalil said the landscape around Hajin was vast and arid, "larger than just a pocket."
The SDF estimates some 3,000 jihadists are defending the area.
They have laid a massive network of trenches, barriers, and explosives that were "hindering" the SDF's advance, Khalil said.
"Most of the fighters in the Hajin region are foreigners with fighting experience," he added.
Hajin, which lies in a small stretch east of the winding Euphrates River, is one of ISIS's final holdouts in Syria.
The jihadist group lost its de facto Syrian capital Raqqa one year ago this week to the SDF, which has chased it out of swathes of the country's north and east.
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