Iraqi forces retake the country’s last Islamic State-held town

Iraqi forces backed by the U.S.-led coalition on Friday retook the last town in the country that was held by the Islamic State group, more than three years after the militants stormed nearly a third of Iraqi territory, the Defense Ministry’s spokesman said.

At dawn, Iraqi military units and local tribal fighters pushed into the western neighborhoods of Rawah in western Anbar province and, after just five hours of fighting, they retook the town, according to Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool.

Rawah, 175 miles northwest of Baghdad, lies along the Euphrates River Valley near the border town of Qaim that Iraqi forces retook from Islamic State earlier this month.

U.S.-led coalition forces supported the operations to retake Rawah and Qaim with intelligence, airstrikes and advisors, coalition spokesman Ryan Dillon said.

Islamic State blitzed across Iraq’s north and west in the summer of 2014, capturing Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul and advancing to the edges of the capital, Baghdad. Later that year, the United States began a campaign of airstrikes against the militants that fueled Iraqi territorial gains, allowing the military to retake Mosul in July this year.

All that now remains of Islamic State-held Iraq are patches of rural territory in the country’s vast western desert along the border with Syria.

Islamic State has also steadily been losing ground across the border in Syria, where its so-called caliphate has basically crumbled with the loss of the city of Raqqah, the former Islamic State capital, which fell to the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in October.

Both the U.S. and Russia have embedded special forces with their respective partners and are supporting their advances with airstrikes. Russia backs Syrian government forces of President Bashar Assad.

The last urban areas controlled by the militants in Syria are the border town of Boukamal and a patch of territory near the capital, Damascus, and in central Hama province.

Syrian government forces, backed by Russian troops and Iranian-backed militias, originally pushed Islamic State out of Boukamal earlier this month, but the militants retook a large part of the town, mostly its northern neighborhoods days later. Since then, Islamic State has repelled government forces trying to push back into the town.

Meanwhile, U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces are also approaching Boukamal from the eastern side of the Euphrates.

Despite Islamic State’s significant territorial losses, the group’s media arm remains intact, allowing it to still recruit supporters and inspire new attacks. Iraqi and American officials say Islamic State militants are expected to continue carrying out insurgent-style attacks in Syria, Iraq and beyond.

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