SYRIA DECLARES VICTORY OVER ISLAMIC STATE
Islamic State militants on Thursday withdrew from their last stronghold in Syria following a government offensive that has effectively left the extremist group’s fighters dispersed in villages and small towns in the desert. “The liberation of Boukamal is of great importance because it is a declaration of the fall of this group’s project in the region generally and the collapse of its supporters’ illusions to divide it...” said an Army spokesman.
BEIRUT:Syria’s Army declared victory over Islamic State on Thursday, saying its capture of the jihadists’ last town in the country marked the collapse of their project in the region.
The army and its allies are still fighting IS in desert areas near Albu Kamal, the last town the militant group had held in Syria, near the border with Iraq.
But the capture of the town ends Islamic State’s era of territorial rule over the so-called caliphate that it proclaimed in 2014 across Iraq and Syria.
Yet after ferocious defensive battles in its most important cities this year, where its fighters bled for every house and street, its final collapse has come with lightning speed.
Instead of a battle to the death as they mounted a last stand in the Euphrates valley towns and villages near the border between Iraq and Syria, many fighters surrendered or fled.
In Albu Kamal, the jihadists had fought fiercely, said a commander in the pro-Syrian government military alliance. But it was captured the same day the assault began.
This sealed “the fall of the terrorist Daesh organisation’s project in the region”, an army statement said, using an Arabic term for Islamic State.
The fate of its last commanders is still unknown -- killed by bombardment or in battle, taken prisoner but unidentified, or hunkered into long-prepared hideouts to plot a new insurgency.
The last appearance of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who declared himself caliph from the great medieval mosque in Mosul, was made in an audio recording in September.
Mosul fell to Iraqi forces in July after a nine-month battle. Islamic State’s Syrian capital of Raqqa fell in October to the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias, after four months of fighting.
But all the forces fighting IS in Syria and Iraq expect a new phase of guerrilla warfare, a tactic the militants have already shown themselves capable of with operations in both countries.