French close in on ISIS

French howitzer guns deployed in the Euphrates Valley desert just inside Iraq stand ready to pour fury on Islamic State group diehards in their last holdout across the border in Syria.

Warplanes flash through the sky, followed seconds later by explosions on the Syrian side that send up a mushroom cloud.

“We’re less than 10km from the frontline here,” points out Colonel Francois-Regis Legrier.

He is the commander of Task Force Wagram, a French artillery group within the US-led military coalition that backs up Iraqi soldiers and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against the jihadists.

Dozens of 155mm shells are lined up ready to be loaded onto three green-and-black Caesar gun howitzers with a range of 40km.

The SDF, a coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters, announced a final push to retake

The terrorists are leaderless, without communications, in disarray

the jihadist pocket in and around the village of Baghouz near the Iraqi border late on Saturday, after a pause of more than a week to allow civilians to flee.

“The end is near,” is the message from France’s defence minister Florence Parly who visited the Task Force Wagram site in Al-Qaim from Baghdad aboard an American V-22 Osprey military aircraft.

“The terrorists are leaderless, without communications, in disarray, on the verge of collapse. So let’s finish off this fight,” the minister told a group of some 40 French soldiers manning the outpost alongside 100 US troops.

Legrier says there are “a few hundred fighters left in Baghouz, not more”.

He pointed to challenges caused by frequent sandstorms and heavy rains.

Weather conditions have often grounded warplanes but artillery has been largely unaffected. –