Mar 8, 2018

The fight against the Islamic State group is now more focused on stabilising captured areas and identifying returning foreign jihadis following the capture of Mosul and Raqqa, officials in the US-led coalition fighting the network said Thursday.

In the last year the Islamic State has lost a swathe of territory in Syria and Iraq that it had captured in 2014 and infamously then declared its "caliphate".

Iraqi forces backed by airstrikes from the global coalition expelled the group from Mosul last summer, while Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) took control of Raqqa in neighbouring Syria in October.

"Despite crushing the so-called caliphate and exposing Daesh (the Islamic State group) ideology for the lie it is, we mustn't let up in our pursu

it of these apocalyptic terrorists," said Ryan Dillon, an American colonel and spokesman for the coalition, in London.