Syrian rebels say they've captured the village of Dabiq from Islamic State, forcing the jihadist group from a stronghold where it has promised to fight a final, apocalyptic battle with the West.
Its defeat at Dabiq on Sunday, which was long a mainstay of Islamic State's propaganda, underscores the group's declining fortunes this year as it suffered battlefield defeats in Syria and Iraq and lost a string of senior leaders in targeted air strikes.
The group, whose lightning advance through swathes of the two countries and declaration that it had established a new caliphate stunned world leaders in 2014, is now girding for an offensive against Iraq's Mosul, its most prized possession.
The rebels, backed by Turkish tanks and warplanes, took Dabiq and neighbouring Soran after clashes on Sunday morning, said Ahmed Osman, head of the Sultan Murad group, one of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions involved in the fighting.
"The Daesh myth of their great battle in Dabiq is finished," he told Reuters, using a pejorative name for Islamic State.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman said that Dabiq's liberation was a "strategic and symbolic victory" against Islamic State.
The Free Syrian Army is an umbrella group for rebels seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions, dragging in regional and global powers and creating space for jihadists.
Dabiq was the location of the killing in 2014 of Peter Kassig, an American aid worker held hostage, by Mohammed al-Emwazi, better known as Jihadi John.
However, it has appeared to back away from Dabiq's symbolism since advances by the FSA groups backed by Turkey had put it at risk of capture, saying in a more recent statement that this battle was not the one described in the prophecy.
The village, at the foot of a small hill in the fertile plains of Syria's northwest about 14 km from the Turkish border and 33 km north of Aleppo, has little strategic significance in its own right.
