ISIS loses territory on Syrian border

CAIRO — Islamic State has lost its last link between its main territories and the outside world as Syrian rebels backed by Turkish tanks and airstrikes captured the last stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border held by the extremist group.

Rebel forces advancing west from the town of Jarabulus and east from al-Rai captured the last border villages held by Islamic State on Sunday afternoon, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and rebel groups involved in the offensive.

Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency confirmed the development, which puts an end to more than three years of Islamic State presence on the border.

Islamic State used the area, northeast of Aleppo, to bring foreign fighters into its territories in Iraq and Syria.

Its recruitment rocketed as it gained ground in the Syrian civil war from 2013 on and then captured large parts of northern and western Iraq in June 2014.

But it lost most of its border territory to Kurdish-led Syrian forces backed by U.S.-led airstrikes who forced it from parts of northeastern Syria after defeating it in the battle for the border town of Kobane in 2015.

The U.S. saw that campaign, spearheaded by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units as key to isolating the extremist group’s de facto Syrian capital of Raqqa and disrupting its supply lines.