Capturing the village in eastern Syria will be a milestone in international efforts to roll back the jihadists, whose self-styled “caliphate” covered roughly one third of Syria and Iraq at its height in 2014. The SDF had said it expected a “decisive battle” on Sunday after advancing gradually for 18 hours to avoid land mines sown by Islamic State (IS), whose fighters are also using underground tunnels to stage ambushes and then disappear. By midday, however, there was no sign of the battle being over, and a spokesman for the U.S.-led international coalition supporting the SDF said the pace of the advance had ebbed.
