DEIR AL-ZOR PROVINCE, Syria — The US-backed forces said they had captured Daesh’s (so-called IS) last shred of territory in eastern Syria at Baghouz on Saturday, ending its territorial rule over a self-proclaimed caliphate after years of fighting.

“Baghouz has been liberated. The military victory against Daesh has been accomplished,” Mustafa Bali, a Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) spokesman, wrote on Twitter, declaring the “total elimination of (the) so-called caliphate”.

At a victory ceremony near Baghouz, a brass band in red uniforms with gold brocade played the American national anthem in front of a stars and stripes flag and yellow militia banners. SDF leaders including both men and women sat watching.

However, a Reuters journalist at Baghouz said some shooting and mortar fire continued on Saturday morning and an SDF commander warned that the coming phase in the struggle, with Daesh sleeper cells plotting mayhem, might be even harder.

The final battle lasted weeks as huge numbers of civilians poured out, and for many Kurdish fighters in the SDF, victory was sweeter as it coincided with their “Now Ruz” new year.

Though the defeat of Daesh in Baghouz ends the group’s grip over the quasi-state straddling Syria and Iraq that it declared in 2014, it remains a threat. Some of its fighters still hold out in Syria’s remote central desert and in Iraqi cities they have slipped into the shadows, staging sudden shootings or kidnappings and awaiting a chance to rise again.

The United States believes the group’s leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, is in Iraq. Further afield, militants in Afghanistan, Nigeria and elsewhere have shown no sign of recanting their allegiance to Daesh, and intelligence services say its devotees in the West might plot new attacks.

Still, the fall of Baghouz is a big milestone in a fight against the group waged by numerous local and global forces over more than four years.

Over the past two months some 60,000 people poured out of that dwindling enclave, fleeing SDF bombardment and a shortage of food so severe that some said they were reduced to cooking grass.

Civilians made up more than half the people leaving Baghouz, the SDF said, including Daesh victims. As the fighting progressed, the convoys of trucks from Baghouz started to include hundreds, and then thousands, of surrendering militants, many hobbling from their wounds.

In Al-Omar, an oilfield used as the main SDF staging base for the final phase of the assault, fighters in their best fatigues laid down their weapons and broke into song and dance.

French President Emmanuel Macron hailed the fall of Baghouz saying “a significant threat to our country” has been “eliminated”.

The Pentagon, however, has warned in a recent report that the absence of sustained counterterrorism pressure on Daesh would allow the jihadists to reclaim some territorial control within months. — Agencies

John Spencer, a scholar at the Modern War Institute at West Point, warned that while the geographic caliphate had been dismantled, Daesh was far from defeated.

IS “is a terrorist organization, all they have to do is put down their weapons and try to blend in with the population and just escape,” he told AFP. “They’re not gone, and they’re not going to be gone.” — Agencies