About 200 families are trapped in a shrinking area of Syria still controlled by Islamic State.
Colville urged the Islamic State to provide safe passage for civilians, but also the U.S.-led Coalition and their Syrian Democratic Forces allies to take precaution to protect civilians in the fight against ISIS.
Islamic State redrew the map of the Middle East in 2014, when it declared a caliphate across large areas of Syria and Iraq. But the group steadily lost ground and its two main prizes — the Syrian city of Raqqa and Iraq’s Mosul — fell in 2017.
