War against Daesh has ended: Iraq

baghdad — Iraq said on Saturday its war on Daesh is over after more than three years of combat operations drove the extremists from all of the territory they once held.

Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi said Iraqi forces were in full control of the country’s border with Syria during remarks at a conference in Baghdad, and his spokesman said the development marked the end of the military fight against Daesh. “All Iraqi lands are liberated from terrorist Daesh gangs and our forces completely control the international Iraqi-Syrian border,” Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Rasheed Yar Allah said. —

baghdad — Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi said on Saturday that Iraqi forces had driven the last remnants of Daesh from the country, three years after the militant group captured about a third of Iraq’s territory.

The announcement comes two days after the Russian military announced the defeat of the militants in neighbouring Syria, where Moscow is backing Syrian government forces. The Iraqi forces recaptured the last areas still under the Daesh control along the border with Syria, state television quoted Abadi as telling an Arab media conference in Baghdad.

Several squadrons of Iraqi helicopters flew over Baghdad carrying Iraqi flags at noon, in an apparent rehearsal for a victory parade that Iraq is planning to hold in the coming days.

“Commander-in-Chief @HaiderAlAbadi announces that Iraq’s armed forces have secured the western desert & the entire Iraq Syria border, says this marks the end of the war against Daesh terrorists who have been completely defeated and evicted from Iraq,” the federal government’s official account tweeted.

In a separate tweet later, Abadi said: “Our heroic armed forces have now secured the entire length

Our heroic armed forces have now secured the entire length of the Iraq-Syria border. We defeated daesh through our unity and sacrifice for the nation. Long live Iraq and its people.”

Prime Minister HaiderAl Abadi

of the Iraq-Syria border. We defeated Daesh through our unity and sacrifice for the nation. Long live Iraq and its people.” The USled coalition that has been supporting the Iraqi forces against Daesh welcomed the news in a tweet.

“The Coalition congratulate the people of Iraq on their significant victory against #Daesh. We stand by them as they set the conditions of guerrilla warfare, a tactic the militants have already shown themselves capable of.

The war has had a devastating impact on the areas previously controlled by the militants. About 3.2 million people remain displaced, a UN statement said on Saturday.

Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, who in 2014 declared in Mosul the founding of a new caliphate in Iraq and Syria, released an audio recording on September 28 that indicated he was alive, after several reports he had been killed. He urged his followers to keep up the fight despite setbacks. Baghdadi is believed to be hiding in the stretch of desert in the border area.

His followers imposed a reign of terror on the populations they controlled, alienating even many of those Sunni Muslims who had supported the group as allies against the heavy-handed rule of the Shia majority-led government of the time.

The militants took thousands of women from the Yazidi minority, which lives in a mountain west of Mosul, as sex slaves and killed the men. Driven from its two de facto capitals, Daesh was squeezed this year into an ever-shrinking pocket of desert, straddling the frontier between the two countries, by enemies that include regional states and global powers. —