Their battle against the last jihadists holding out in the besieged Syrian village of Baghouz hasn’t quite ended but Kurdish-led fighters have already started celebrating. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) delivered the killer blow to the last vestige of the Islamic State group’s “caliphate” this week and the end of the bruising six-month-old operation is now within touching distance. With backing from the US-led coalition’s warplanes, they forced holdout jihadists from their main encampment and into a few hectares (couple of acres) of farmland by the Euphrates River.
