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Islamic State down to less than 1% of original caliphate: U.S.-led coalition

AFP

An armored vehicle drives in the front line village of Baghouz in the countryside of the eastern Syrian Deir Ezzor province, on the border with Iraq

BEIRUT - Recent gains by Kurdish-led forces in Syria have shrunk the Islamic State group’s “caliphate” to less than one percent of its original size, the U.S.-led coalition said on Thursday.

Maj. Gen. Christopher Ghika, the coalition’s deputy commander, described the size of the last patch of land held by the jihadists as “now less than one percent of the original caliphate.

The coalition and allied Kurdish forces have captured “approximately 99.5 percent” of IS-controlled territory, he said in a statement.

At its height, the jihadi proto-state proclaimed by IS in Syria and Iraq in June 2014 was roughly the size of Britain.

But it has since lost most of that territory to various offensives.

The jihadis are now clinging on to a small sliver of land near the village of Baghouz in eastern Syria and many residents are fleeing and turning themselves in ahead of a final offensive.

Jihadis “are attempting to escape through intermixing with the innocent women and children attempting to flee the fighting,” the coalition deputy commanding general, Ghika, was quoted as saying.

“These tactics won’t succeed, our Syrian partners are focused on finding ISIS wherever they hide, and our Iraqi partners have secured their borders,” he said, using another acronym for IS.

More than 37,000 people, mostly wives and children of jihadi fighters, have fled IS territory since the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by the US-led coalition, intensified its offensive in December, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Britain-based war monitor has said that figure includes some 3,200 suspected jihadis.