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AHMAD AL-RUBAYE
U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters have captured Hajin, the last ISIS-held town in Syria, in a deeply symbolic blow to the terror group that overran vast swaths of territory in 2014, but which is now believed to control as little as 2 percent of its former holdings. ISIS still holds some villages near Hajin, but the success of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in taking the town, which was believed to be sheltering some 2,000 gunmen, is being hailed as a significant milestone. ISIS has been driven from nearly all the territory it once held in Syria in separate campaigns waged by the U.S.-backed SDF on the one hand, and the Russian-backed Syrian government on the other.