Final IS bastion in Syria has fallen, claim White House, Syrian Democratic Forces

Washington, March 23: In a major announcement, the White House has said that all territories held by the Islamic State (IS) in Syria have been eliminated. US President Donald Trump also called the extremist group "losers and barely breathing".

"Just over two years ago, ISIS was considered one of the gravest threats to the future of the Middle East-and to the peace and security of the free world. Now, the self-declared caliphate has been obliterated off the map. Literally," the White House said in a tweet on Friday, March 22.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) also announced on Saturday, March 23, that the IS has lost its final stronghold in the war-ravaged nation, and that brought to an end the so-called caliphate declared by the outfit five years ago. The SDF also claimed to have fully liberated the town of Baghouz in Syria's eastern part.

"Syrian Democratic Forces declare total elimination of so-called caliphate and 100% territorial defeat of ISIS. On this unique day, we commemorate thousands of martyrs whose efforts made the victory possible," tweeted Mustafa Bali, head of the SDF press office.

The IS had controlled huge chunks of territory stretching from western Syria to the outskirts of Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. The IS was on the retreat in Iraq and the final battle took place over the past many weeks around Baghouz on the banks of the Euphrates River.

A coalition of Kurdish and Arab soldiers backed by the US-led western forces launched the final assault on the IS stronghold early last month. </s> Leaders from a number of countries are reacting to the announcement by US-backed forces that they have captured the last enclave held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) in Syria, eliminating the group's so-called caliphate.

After weeks of heavy fighting and aerial bombardment, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Saturday declared victory over ISIL, saying they had flushed the group's fighters from their last remaining stronghold in the eastern town of Baghouz, on the banks of the Euphrates River.

"We announce today the destruction of the so-called Islamic State organisation and the end of its ground control in its last pocket in Baghouz," Mazloum Abdi, SDF general commander, told a victory ceremony.

The SDF has been Washington's partner on the ground in Syria, spearheading the fight against ISIL for the past five years.

The announcement marked the end of a brutal self-styled caliphate that ISIL - originally an offshoot of al-Qaeda - carved out in large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014.

Yet the capture of Baghouz will likely not mark the end of ISIL as a force in the region, according to analysts.

Here's the initial regional and international reaction to the news of the fall of ISIL's last bastion.

The top military commander of the SDF urged the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to choose the path of dialogue after ISIL's military defeat, as he announced a "new phase" in the conflict.

"We call on the central government in Damascus to prefer the process of dialogue," Mazloum Kobane said in a statement.

He also called on Damascus to "start practical steps to reach a political solution based on the recognition" of autonomous institutions and of the SDF's special status.

Commenting on the battle against ISIL, he said that a "new phase in the fight against terrorists" is beginning, adding that the target was now to eliminate the group's "sleeper cells".

An envoy for the US-led coalition fighting ISIL hailed the demise of ISIL as a "critical milestone".

"We congratulate the Syrian people and particularly the Syrian Democratic Forces on the destruction of ISIS's fraudulent caliphate," said William Roebuck.

"While we have completed the territorial defeat of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, we still have much work to do to achieve an enduring defeat of ISIS ... ISIS remains a significant threat in the region, (to) the United States and our partners and allies," he added.

His remarks came a day after President Donald Trump declared that ISIL fighters were no longer in control of any territory in Syria.

"Here's ISIS on Election Day," he said, linking coalition gains since then to his presidency. He pointed to a swath of red signifying the group's previous territorial hold, and then to one without any red: "Here's ISIS right now."

President Emmanuel Macron said a source of potential violence had been "eliminated" but warned that "the threat remains and the fight against terrorist groups must continue".

"Syrian Democratic Forces have announced that Daesh's last stronghold has fallen. I pay homage to our partners and to the armies of the international coalition, of which France is part," Macron said on Twitter.

"They fought the terrorists with determination for our security."

Prime Minister Theresa May called the bastion's fall "a historic milestone" in the fight against ISIL, and said the British government remained "committed to eradicating their poisonous ideology".

"The liberation of the last Daesh-held territory wouldn't have been possible without the immense courage of UK military and our allies," she said on Twitter, using the group's acronym in Arabic.

"We will continue to do what is necessary to protect the British people, our Allies and partners from the threat Daesh poses."

Britain said its armed forces had nearly 1,400 personnel in the region providing support to local forces in addition to numerous air attacks carried out by the Royal Air Force.

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas described the end of the caliphate as "an important step".

He warned, however, that it was "clear" that ISIL "continues to represent a considerable threat".

"We shall not underestimate that threat," he said. </s> Western-backed forces said on Saturday morning that in a “very short time” they would announce the defeat of Isil.

Jiya Furat, a commander with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said that they had cornered the remaining Islamic State militants in one tiny neighbourhood of Baghouz village in eastern Deir Ezzor province, under its fire from all sides.

"Very soon bring good news to the whole world," he said in an apparent reference to an announcement about the defeat of the extremists in Syria.

There are thought to be just a few hundred Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) fighters left, most of whom foreign.

Hundreds of civilians have poured out of Baghouz in recent days but a number are thought to still be left, which is slowing down the SDF. </s> Syrian Democratic Forces have now raised their flag in Baghouz in eastern Syria

US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces say they have "totally eliminated" Islamic State in Syria.

The SDF made the announcement as it declared the battle against the insurgents in the final IS stronghold of Baghouz in the east of the country was over.

It has been battling the last IS remnants in the border town near Iraq for weeks as the jihadists have been using civilians as human shields.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have now claimed "all territory in Syria is now clear of IS fighters".

SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali tweeted: "Syrian Democratic Forces declare total elimination of so-called caliphate and 100% territorial defeat of ISIS.

"On this unique day, we commemorate thousands of martyrs whose efforts made the victory possible." #SDFDefeatedISIS.

Thousands of civilians, including families of IS fighters, have been fleeing Baghouz in recent weeks amid intense fighting, and are now being held in camps.

At its height, the militant group's caliphate, which it declared in 2014, stretched across a third of Syria and Iraq.

However, despite the SDF's victory, IS insurgents still remain a threat.

Some are hiding out in Syria's remote central desert, and in Iraqi cities they have gone underground, carrying out shootings and kidnappings.

The US believes the group's leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, who declared the caliphate five years ago in Mosul, is in Iraq.

On Friday, President Donald Trump said IS insurgents no longer controlled any territory in Syria, though the US was still launching airstrikes and sporadic fighting continued on the ground.

"It's about time," Mr Trump told reporters, as he held up maps indicating the large territory once held by IS had shrunk to nothing.

"Here's ISIS on election day," he said, pointing to a swathe of red showing the areas the insurgent group controlled when he became president.

He then pointed to a version without any red, and said "here's ISIS right now", as he linked SDF gains to his time in power. </s> The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) resumed their assault against the last ISIL enclave in eastern Syria, aiming to wipe out the last vestige of its self-declared "caliphate" that once spanned one-third of Iraq and Syria.

Explosions and fires illuminated columns of smoke over Baghouz village after the Kurdish-led SDF launched the offensive around 6pm (16:00 GMT) on Sunday. The fighting began anew after a deadline for the group's armed men to surrender expired.

Rustam Hasake, an SDF commander, said several ISIL tunnels were destroyed by the advancing troops.

"We have been able to liberate a number of positions from them. We are currently advancing with the support of the international coalition from the air and on the ground as well," he said.

While Baghouz represents the last shred of populated land held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's (ISIL or ISIS) fighters, the armed group is still widely seen as a big security threat with remote territory elsewhere and the continued capacity to launch attacks.

The SDF have been poised to advance into the enclave for weeks, but have repeatedly held back to allow for the evacuation of civilians, many of them wives and children of ISIL fighters.

Mustafa Bali, the head of the SDF media office, said on Sunday no further civilians had emerged from the enclave at the Iraqi border since Saturday and the SDF had not observed any more civilians in the area, prompting the decision to attack.

"The military operations have started. Our forces are now clashing with the terrorists and the attack started," he said.

Bali said the SDF had given the ISIL fighters time to surrender, and that time was over.

ISIL surrounded

Tens of thousands of people have streamed out of the shrinking territory held by the ISIL in recent months. Aid agencies in the area are struggling to cope with the influx, according to NGOs, including Save the Children.

Bali said more than 4,000 fighters had surrendered to the SDF in the past month.

Earlier on Sunday, a correspondent of the Reuters news agency saw the SDF advance into a tented area of Baghouz after the ISIL fighters withdrew from it. The SDF fighters gathered some ammunition and rifles left behind by the armed group.

The SDF announced the military operation to capture Baghouz in September, but has held off a full-blown assault after it became apparent that a huge number of civilians were still inside.

Syrian military air raids against the ISIL fighters further west in the country's central desert were a reminder of the constant warnings by both Arab and Western officials that the group will continue to pose a serious security threat.

After its sudden advance across swaths of Syria and Iraq in 2014, the group held about one-third of both countries, but its wholesale slaughter or sexual enslavement of minorities and its grotesque public killings roused global anger.

Separate offensives by different forces in both countries steadily drove it back, inflicting major ISIL defeats in 2017, and eventually forcing it back on Baghouz, a little cluster of hamlets and farmland on the Euphrates. </s> A United States-backed Syrian militia on Tuesday announced it had captured a camp from the Islamic State terror group in eastern Syria, leaving the organization's remaining territory in the war-torn country further weakened.

Last week, the Syrian Democratic Forces, an ethnically-mixed militia led by Kurds, resumed their final offensive to liberate the village of Baghuz after evacuating thousands of civilians. </s> (CNN) — ISIS has lost its final stronghold in Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces announced Saturday, bringing an end to the so-called caliphate declared by the terrorist group in 2014.

The Syrian Democratic Forces said it defeated ISIS and fully liberated Baghouz in eastern Syria.

“Syrian Democratic Forces declare total elimination of so-called caliphate and 100% territorial defeat of ISIS. On this unique day, we commemorate thousands of martyrs whose efforts made the victory possible,” tweeted Mustafa Bali, head of the SDF press office.

At its peak, ISIS controlled a huge stretch of territory stretching from western Syria to the outskirts of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. But the final battle took place in the past several weeks around the small and otherwise unremarkable Syrian town of Baghouz, on the banks of the Euphrates River.

A coalition of Kurdish and Arab soldiers backed by US, British and French special forces launched the last assault on the ISIS enclave in early February.

For weeks, US-led coalition airstrikes had pummeled parts of the town while fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) pushed forward on the ground.

Before the offensive started, SDF officials estimated that 1,500 civilians and 500 ISIS fighters remained, but as the assault got under way it became clear that the actual number was much higher. The final phase of the battle was delayed to allow thousands more civilians — along with foreign ISIS supporters — out of of the besieged town.

The militants who mounted the last stand in Baghouz included some of the most battle-hardened and experienced personnel remaining in ISIS, and the wives and children of the fighters were used as human shields.

SDF commanders told CNN that its fighters had faced fierce resistance from the terror group, which slowed the offensive with snipers, improvised explosive devices improvised and heat-seeking missiles. The militants had also dug a network of underground tunnels that allowed them to move from house to house undetected.

The capture of Baghouz comes nearly three months after US President Donald Trump surprised America’s allies — not least SDF forces on the ground — by declaring that ISIS had been defeated in Syria and announcing that US troops would be rapidly withdrawn from the country. The decision triggered the resignations of Defense Secretary James Mattis and the senior State Department official in charge of the anti-ISIS campaign.

The developments also come more than four years after the group’s elusive leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, announced the creation of a caliphate from the pulpit of the al-Nuri mosque in the Iraqi city of Mosul.

At the group’s height, 7.7 million people were estimated to live under ISIS rule, according to Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR), the official name for the coalition fighting ISIS. Many of those people paid taxes, fees and fines to ISIS, which made up a large portion of the group’s income.

In the years since, the group’s annual revenue more than halved: from up to $1.9 billion in 2014 to a maximum of $870 million in 2016, according to a recent report by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) at King’s College London.

Despite the loss of territory, and funds, a UN-monitoring committee estimated in July 2018 that ISIS membership in Iraq and Syria was still between 20,000 and 30,000.

Altogether, at least 41,490 international citizens traveled to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS, according to ICSR. And foreign fighters continued to arrive, undeterred — the coalition recently estimated that about 50 were arriving each month.

Has the battle against ISIS really been won?

ISIS may have lost its last sliver of terrain in Syria, but the group is currently waging a fresh guerrilla campaign in far-flung territories of northern Iraq. And its black flag is still flown by affiliates in other corners of the globe, including Nigeria, Libya, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Afghanistan and the Philippines.

The US commander leading the war on ISIS said in February that he disagreed with Trump’s decision late last year to withdraw troops from Syria, saying the terror group was far from defeated.

Joseph Votel, the top American general in the Middle East, warned: “(The caliphate) still has leaders, still has fighters, it still has facilitators, it still has resources, so our continued military pressure is necessary to continue to go after that network.”

In mid-February, a new Pentagon report also appeared to reinforce the notion that total victory over ISIS was not on the horizon.

The report, the first of its kind since Trump announced plans to pull all troops from Syria, also says “ISIS remains an active insurgent group in both Iraq and Syria.”

“ISIS is regenerating key functions and capabilities more quickly in Iraq than in Syria, but absent sustained [counterterrorism] pressure, ISIS could likely resurge in Syria within six to twelve months and regain limited territory,” the report said. </s> The US Defense Department said on Friday that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) no longer holds any territory in Syria, according to a White House spokeswoman.

US Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan briefed President Donald Trump as he was travelling to Florida on Air Force One, spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said.

She said that the "territorial caliphate has been eliminated in Syria". Responding to a question regarding whether the armed group's territory had be "100 percent" eliminated, Sanders said "yes".

She directed other questions regarding the announcement to the Pentagon.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has not commented on the White House's announcement.

Earlier on Friday, the SDF said it had captured most of ISIL's last enclave in Baghouz, but there were still pockets of ISIL fighters.

The SDF has been battling for weeks to defeat ISIL in Baghouz in southeastern Syria at the Iraqi border. It was all that remained of the territory the armed group ruled, which once spanned a third of Syria and Iraq.

A Reuters journalist in Baghouz heard air strikes there on Friday afternoon and saw smoke rising.

Al Jazeera's Alan Fisher, reporting from Washington, DC, said that difficulty, however, is that "ISIL hasn't gone away and everyone knows that".

"Trump will undoubtedly get the victory that he wanted ... but the group hasn't gone away," Fisher said.

Shortly after Sanders made the comments to reporters, Trump tweeted, "ISIS uses the internet better than almost anyone, but for all of those susceptible to ISIS propaganda, they are now being beaten badly at every level."

Trump had been teasing Friday's announcement for days. On Wednesday, he said the group would be "gone by tonight", showing reporters two maps that he claimed to show the reduction of ISIL's territory since he was elected president in 2016.

In December, Trump unexpectedly announced that he was pulling all 2,000 American troops out of Syria, declaring that ISIL had been defeated.

He walked back on that announcement, however, as military generals and politicians expressed fear that such a move would allow the group to re-emerge. He was then persuaded to leave about 400 troops in Syria. </s> U.S.-backed fighters in Syria declared victory over Islamic State on Saturday, marking the apparent end of a years-long global campaign to break the extremist group's hold on the region.

The capture of ISIS' last, tiny enclave in the country's south brings its self-proclaimed caliphate to territorial defeat.

"Syrian Democratic Forces declare total elimination of so-called caliphate" spokesman Mustafa Bali said on Twitter early Saturday.

The battle for Baghouz, the group's last holdout and all that remained of the vast territory that it once ruled in Syria and Iraq, had dragged on for more than 10 weeks — far longer than either the U.S. military or their allies on the ground had predicted.

President Donald Trump has been teasing the victory for days.

On Friday, the White House said the Department of Defense had declared that the militant group no longer held any territory in Syria. At around the same time, Trump tweeted that there was "nothing to admire" about ISIS.

The militants, meanwhile, had been putting up a desperate fight, and the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces supported by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes had held off declaring victory.

At a victory ceremony near Baghouz on Saturday, a brass band in red and gold uniforms played the American national anthem in front of a stars and stripes flag and yellow militia banners. SDF leaders including both men and women sat watching.

The SDF had repeatedly paused its final push to capture the village in order to allow more than 30,000 civilians, many of them the wives and families of foreign fighters, to be evacuated.

Bali said they had caught several militants trying to flee among the civilians. Others had handed themselves over.

Their fate has befuddled foreign governments, with few ready to repatriate citizens who pledged allegiance to a group sworn to their destruction, but who might be hard to legally prosecute.

Trump has called on European countries to take back captured Islamic State fighters currently in U.S. custody as the military prepares for a withdrawal.

But a full withdrawal is looking less certain despite the fall of ISIS.

Trump recently told members of Congress in a letter obtained by NBC News that he now agrees "100%" with keeping a military presence in Syria.

It's a major shift from Trump's announcement of a full withdrawal in December, which blindsided U.S. allies as well as many in Washington and prompted the resignation of then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

"We have won against ISIS. We have beaten them and we have beaten them badly," Trump said in a December video posted on Twitter. "We have taken back the land and now it's time for our troops to come back home."

The White House has since said that a peacekeeping group of about 200 troops will remain in Syria "for some period of time."

In the recent letter reiterating that presence, Trump said, "[We] seek to ensure that all of the gains made in Syria are not lost, that ISIS never returns."

The move appears to heed warnings that the symbolic end of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's deathly project may not mean the threats posed by ISIS will cease.

A senior U.S. diplomat said Saturday the territorial defeat of the group is a "critical milestone" that delivers a crushing and strategic blow to the extremist group.

However William Roebuck, the State Department's official in charge of Syria, added that the campaign against ISIS is not over, saying the group remains a significant threat in the region.

"We still have much work to do to achieve an enduring defeat," Roebuck said at a ceremony in eastern Syria's al-Omar oil field base.

A recent Pentagon report found the group could reclaim territory in months and is currently regrouping in Iraq faster than in Syria, underscoring the fluid nature of the security situation in the Middle East.

"Currently, ISIS is regenerating key functions and capabilities more quickly in Iraq than in Syria, but absent sustained [counterterrorism] pressure, ISIS could likely resurge in Syria within six to 12 months," according to the Department of Defense Inspector General Quarterly Report about Operation Inherent Resolve.

The U.S. believes Baghdadi, the group's leader, is in Iraq. He stood at the pulpit of the great medieval mosque in Mosul in 2014 to declare himself caliph, sovereign over all Muslims.

The group no longer controls any territory in Syria or Iraq, but continues to carry out insurgent attacks in both countries. It also maintains affiliates in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The Syrian Democratic Forces announce the capture of the last territory held by ISIL in Syria.