NEAR BAGHOUZ, Syria (Reuters) - U.S.-backed fighters in Syria are poised to capture Islamic State’s last, tiny enclave on the Euphrates, the battle commander said on Saturday, bringing its self-declared caliphate to the brink of total defeat as U.S. President Donald Trump spoke of “100 percent victory”.

Jiya Furat said the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had cornered the remaining militants in a neighborhood of Baghouz village near the Iraqi border, under fire from all sides.

“In the coming few days, in a very short time, we will spread the good tidings to the world of the military end of Daesh,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

He was speaking after Trump said on Friday there would be “great announcements” about Syria over the next 24 hours.

Trump on Saturday said the caliphate was “ready to fall and that the United States was asking European allies to take back more than 800 Islamic State fighters captured in Syria and put them on trial.

“The United States is asking Britain, France, Germany and other European allies to take back over 800 ISIS fighters that we captured in Syria and put them on trial,” he said in a Tweet. “The Caliphate is ready to fall. The alternative is not a good one in that we will be forced to release them...

“....The U.S. does not want to watch as these ISIS fighters permeate Europe, which is where they are expected to go. We do so much, and spend so much - Time for others to step up and do the job that they are so capable of doing. We are pulling back after 100% Caliphate victory!”

Trump has sworn to pull U.S. forces from Syria after Islamic State’s territorial defeat, raising questions over the fate of Washington’s Kurdish allies and Turkish involvement in northeast Syria.

As the SDF advanced under heavy U.S. airstrikes in recent days, a stream of civilians fled the few square miles of hamlets and farmland that remain within Islamic State’s ‘caliphate’, along with defeated jihadists trying to escape unnoticed.

Though Islamic State fighters still hold out in a pocket of central Syria’s remote desert, and have gone underground as sleeper cells in Iraqi cities, able to launch new attacks, their territorial rule is, for now, almost over.

It ends a project launched from the great medieval mosque of Mosul in northern Iraq in 2014, when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi seized advantage of regional chaos to proclaim himself caliph, suzerain over all Muslim people and land.

He set up a governing system with courts, a currency and flag that at its height stretched from northwest Syria almost to Baghdad, encompassing some two million inhabitants.

(This story adds dropped word in paragraph 4)

HUMAN SHIELDS

But its reign of terror over minorities and other perceived enemies, marked by massacres, sexual slavery and the beheading of hostages, drew a forceful international military response that pushed it steadily back from 2015.

Most of the fighters left in Baghouz are foreigners, the SDF has said, among the thousands drawn by Baghdadi’s promise of a new jihadist utopia straddling the Iraqi-Syrian border and expunging national borders.

A member of Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) sits in front of closed shops in the village of Baghouz, Deir Al Zor province, Syria February 17, 2019. REUTERS/Rodi Said

All that remains, said Furat, is an encircled pocket some 700 meters square. “Thousands of civilians are still trapped there as human shields,” he said.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the SDF had taken control of all of Baghouz after the jihadists there surrendered. SDF officials denied this.

Spokesman Mustafa Bali said the SDF had caught several militants trying to flee among the civilians. Others had handed themselves over.

Their fate, and that of their families, has befuddled foreign governments, with few ready to repatriate citizens who pledged allegiance to a group sworn to their destruction, but who might be hard to legally prosecute. The SDF does not want to hold them indefinitely.

The fate of Baghdadi is also a mystery. He has led the group since 2010, when it was still an underground al-Qaeda offshoot in Iraq.

STILL A THREAT

Its capacity then for strategic retreats in hard times, followed by rebounds when circumstances changed, has prompted numerous warnings that Islamic State’s defeat has not ended the threat it poses to the region.

Islamic State suffered crippling defeats in 2017, when Iraq recaptured Mosul, the SDF seized its Syrian capital of Raqqa, and the Damascus government pushed it east to the Euphrates.

But in Iraq it has switched to guerrilla hit-and-run tactics, aimed at undermining the Baghdad government. It has also claimed responsibility for a series of bombings in swathes of northeast Syria held by the SDF, including one last month that killed four Americans.

Slideshow (12 Images)

That attack came soon after Trump pledged to pull out, saying Islamic State was already defeated, rattling allies and prompting defense secretary Jim Mattis to resign.

Turkey, which regards the SDF’s strongest component, the Kurdish YPG, as terrorists, has threatened to march deeper into northern Syria to drive it back.

On Friday U.S. Army General Joseph Votel, who oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East as head of Central Command, said the end of the territorial caliphate would lead to a more dispersed, harder-to-detect network of fighters waging guerrilla warfare.

That should require continued help from Washington, he said.</s>Western-backed forces said on Saturday morning that in a “very short time” they would announce the defeat of Isil.

Jiya Furat, a commander with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said that they had cornered the remaining Islamic State militants in one tiny neighbourhood of Baghouz village in eastern Deir Ezzor province, under its fire from all sides.

"Very soon bring good news to the whole world," he said in an apparent reference to an announcement about the defeat of the extremists in Syria.

There are thought to be just a few hundred Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) fighters left, most of whom foreign.

Hundreds of civilians have poured out of Baghouz in recent days but a number are thought to still be left, which is slowing down the SDF.</s>BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said U.S.-backed fighters seized the last Islamic State enclave in eastern Syria on Saturday after the jihadists who were still there surrendered.

Reuters could not immediately confirm the report.

The UK-based war monitoring group said the last few hundred Islamic State militants, many of them foreigners, had surrendered in the past two days to the Syrian Democratic Forces. It said some militants may still be hiding in underground tunnels.

With the help of U.S. air strikes, the Kurdish-led SDF has battled to crush Islamic State in the shrinking Baghouz enclave east of the Euphrates river near the Iraqi border.</s>(Hatha al-Youm | Iraq News )- Syrian Kurdish-led SDF forces in north Syria, 2019. Photo: SDF Press.BEIRUT,— The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Kurdish-led fighters seized the last Islamic State enclave in eastern Syria on Saturday after the jihadists who were still there surrendered.The UK-based war monitoring group said the last few hundred Islamic State militants, many of them foreigners, had surrendered in the past two days to the Syrian Democratic Forces. It said some militants may still be hiding in underground tunnels.With the help of U.S. airstrikes, the Kurdish-led SDF has battled to crush Islamic State in the shrinking Baghouz enclave east of the Euphrates river near the Iraqi border.The Kurdish-led forces, began the assault on February 10, seeking to wipe out the last remnants of the jihadist group’s “caliphate” in the SDF’s area of operations in eastern and northern Syria.‘Large numbers’ of civilians still in IS enclave: Kurd-led forces“Large numbers” of civilians remain inside the last Islamic State group enclave in Syria prompting a fresh delay in a final advance, Kurdish-led forces said on Saturday.“There are still civilians inside in large numbers,” US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces spokesman Adnan Afrin told AFP on the day President Donald Trump said he expected to announce the end of the jihadists’ “caliphate”.“We weren’t expecting this number, otherwise we wouldn’t have resumed the campaign four days ago. This is why it’s been delayed,” Afrin said.Washington has for years supported the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria, as part of an international anti-jihadist coalition dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). But U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly announced the pullout from Syria.The Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD of Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) and its powerful military wing YPG/YPJ, considered the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and U.S. has provided them with arms. The YPG, which is the backbone of the SDF forces, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | Reuters | AFPComments Comments</s>US President Donald Trump has demanded that Europe take in hundreds of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) fighters captured in Syria, threatening that the United States would otherwise be forced to release them.

"The United States is asking Britain, France, Germany and other European allies to take back over 800 ISIS fighters that we captured in Syria and put them on trial," the president wrote in a flurry of social media posts on Saturday.

"The caliphate is ready to fall. The alternative is not a good one in that we will be forced to release them.

"The US does not want to watch as these ISIS fighters permeate Europe, which is where they are expected to go.

"We do so much, and spend so much - Time for others to step up and do the job that they are so capable of doing. We are pulling back after 100 per cent Caliphate victory!" he wrote.

Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reporting from Gaziantep near the Turkish border with Syria, said that the latest statement from Trump puts pressure on US allies in Europe.

However, he said that it remains to be seen whether or not ISIL is completely defeated.

Trump caused widespread concern among US allies in December when he suddenly announced that the US would withdraw its troops from Syria and that Islamic State had already been defeated.

Critics warned that the armed group remained a threat and that a pullout could lead to a resurgence, with US allies in the region not equipped to handle the threat alone.

Sami Nader, director of the Levant institute for Strategic Affairs in Beirut, told Al Jazeera that Trump's remarks are a "recurring theme".

"The big question is, where will they put these fighters," Nader said.

"If they put them in French prisons – then it will be known that these prisons have become organizing cells for those to gather and organize themselves," he said.

"The larger European public does not want these fighters to come back … because they are responsible for terrorist acts."

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed Kurdish-led militia, launched an offensive last week to dislodge ISIL from the village of Baghuz, the only area still under its control, near the Iraqi border.

As the SDF advanced under heavy US air attacks in recent days, a stream of civilians have also fled the few areas that remain under ISIL control, along with defeated fighters trying to escape unnoticed.

Though ISIL fighters still hold out in a pocket of central Syria's remote desert and are believed to have gone underground as sleeper cells in Iraqi cities, their territorial rule is, for now, almost over.

It ends a project launched from a mosque in Mosul in northern Iraq in 2014, when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi seized advantage of regional chaos to proclaim himself caliph, suzerain overall Muslim people and land.

He set up a governing system with courts, a currency and flag that at its height stretched from northwest Syria almost to Baghdad, encompassing some two million people.

According to Nader, the root causes that led to the emergance of ISIL still remain.

"All the political grievances, the ethnic grievances [are still there] and poverty is widespread in this region," he said.

Meanwhile, Turkey, which regards the SDF's strongest component, the Kurdish YPG, as terrorists, has threatened to march deeper into northern Syria to drive it back.

On Friday US Army General Joseph Votel, who oversees American forces in the Middle East as head of Central Command, said the end of ISIL could lead to a more dispersed, harder-to-detect network of fighters waging guerrilla warfare.

That should require continued help from Washington, he said.</s>US President Donald Trump tells European leaders to 'take back' more than 800 ISIL fighters held in Syria.

The end is near for ISIL's so-called caliphate.

That's according to US President Donald Trump, who says the armed group will be defeated in Syria within days.

US-backed Kurdish fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces say they've cornered the last Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, ISIS) remnants in a village near the Iraqi border.

In a tweet, Trump urged Europe to "take back" foreign fighters and put them on trial.

But European countries appear reluctant with one case particularly dividing opinion in the United Kingdom.

So what should be done with ISIL fighters captured in Syria?
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have taken control of Al-Baghuz Fawqani, following the surrender of the last remaining ISIL militants in the town.