BEIRUT: US-backed forces in Syria announced on Saturday they have liberated the last pocket of territory held by the militant Islamic State group in Syria.
“Baghouz has been liberated. The military victory against the Islamic State has been accomplished,” Mustafa Bali, head of the SDF media office, wrote on Twitter.
Though the defeat of Daesh at Baghouz ends the group’s grip over the jihadist quasi-state straddling Syria and Iraq that it declared in 2014, it remains a threat.
The United States believes the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, 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.
