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Operations 'as good as over'

Says SDF; scores of jihadists killed; senior IS figures likely fled: US

Agencies
Kurdish-led forces yesterday said more people were surrendering from the Islamic State group's last scrap of territory in Syria, after overnight air raids and shelling ravaged j ihadist outposts.
A ragged tent encampment in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz is all that remains of a once-sprawling IS "caliphate" declared in 2014 across large swaths of Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have been trying to crush holdout IS fighters for weeks but the mass outpouring of men, women and children from the riverside hamlet has bogged down their advance.
Backed by the US-led coalition, the SDF renewed their assault on Sunday after warning remaining IS fighters that time was up for surrenders.
Airstrikes and shelling have since pummelled Baghouz for two nights in a row, killing scores of fighters and prompting hundreds of jihadists and their relatives to surrender.
"The operation is over, or as good as over, but requires a little more time to be completed practically on the ground," SDF spokesman Kino Gabriel told al-Hadath TV. Islamic State was still putting up resistance with weapons including car bombs.
The frontline was quiet yesterday morning, hours after the airstrikes and rocket attacks on Monday night engulfed the last IS pocket in flames.
The commander said the SDF had slowed its
offensive after daybreak to allow for jihadists and their relatives to turn themselves in.
At the height of its brutal rule, IS controlled a stretch of land in Syria and Iraq the size of the United Kingdom.
The total capture of the Baghouz camp by the SDF would mark the end of the cross-border "caliphate" it proclaimed five years ago.
But beyond Baghouz, IS retains a presence in
eastern Syria's vast Badia desert and sleeper cells in the northeast. The group released a video late Monday allegedly showing jihadists in Baghouz, quietly defiant in the face of the advancing SDF.
However the United States does not believe any senior Islamic State leaders are in Baghouz, assessing they have gone elsewhere as part of the group's shift towards guerrilla tactics, a US defence official has said.