Advertising Read more

Beirut (AFP)

US-backed forces cut off the last escape route for the Islamic State group from Raqa on Thursday, a monitor said, trapping the besieged jihadists inside their de facto Syrian capital.

Fighters with the Syrian Democratic Forces captured two villages on the southern bank of the Euphrates River the jihadists had been passing through to withdraw from the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

It was the latest setback for IS, which declared its "caliphate" straddling Syria and Iraq three years ago but has since lost most of the territory it once controlled.

It came too as Iraqi forces announced the recapture of an iconic mosque in IS's last major Iraqi bastion Mosul, prompting Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to declare "the end" of the "fake" jihadist state.

The SDF, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab forces backed by the US-led anti-IS coalition, broke into Raqa on June 6 after spending months chipping away at jihadist territory around the city.

Its fighters have since captured two eastern and two western districts of the city and are pushing towards the city centre, where IS fighters are holding tens of thousands of civilians.

The SDF had surrounded the jihadists from the north, east and west but they were still able to escape across the Euphrates, which forms the southern border of the city.

Thursday's advance saw SDF fighters capture the villages of Kasrat Afnan and Kasab on the southern bank of the Euphrates, cutting off the route the jihadists were using to withdraw to territory IS controls in the Syrian desert and in Deir Ezzor province.

"The SDF has been able to completely encircle Raqa," said Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britain-based Observatory, which monitors Syria's conflict through a network of sources on the ground.

- 60% of territory lost -

IS overran Raqa in mid-2014 as part of the offensive that saw it seize control of large parts of Syria and Iraq.

The city became infamous as the scene of some of the group's worst atrocities, including public beheadings, and is thought to have been a hub for planning attacks overseas.

The United Nations estimates some 100,000 civilians remain in the city, with the jihadists accused of using them as human shields.

Marking the third anniversary of IS's declaration of a state on June 29, 2014, a leading analysis firm said the jihadists had since lost more than 60 percent of their territory and 80 percent of their revenue.

In January 2015, IS controlled about 90,800 square kilometres, but by June 2017 that number dropped to 36,200, said IHS Markit.

The biggest fall was in the first six months of 2017, when IS lost around 24,000 square kilometres of territory.

"The Islamic State's rise and fall has been characterised by rapid inflation, followed by steady decline," said Columb Strack, senior Middle East analyst at IHS Markit.

"Three years after the 'caliphate' was declared, it is evident that the group's governance project has failed," Strack said.

IHS Markit said IS's average monthly revenue had plummeted by 80 percent, from $81 million in the second quarter of 2015 to just $16 million in the second quarter of 2017.

The White House envoy to the coalition, Brett McGurk, visited one of the recaptured areas on Thursday, meeting with local officials in the northern Syrian town of Tabqa.

IS jihadists were ousted from Tabqa and an adjacent dam on May 10 during the SDF offensive around Raqa.

The visit came a day after McGurk met with members of the Raqa Civil Council, the body expected to run the northern city after IS's expected fall there.

© 2017 AFP