Islamic State insurgents face major assaults on two fronts in both Iraq and Syria, in what could prove to be some of the biggest operations to roll back their caliphate since they proclaimed it in 2014.
In Syria, US special forces are giving ground support in an advisory role to a militia with thousands of Arab and Kurdish fighters, which reportedly captured villages near the strategically-important Turkish border after launching a major operation to cut off IS's last route to the outside world.
In Iraq, Prime Minister Haider Abadi ordered troops to slow an advance at the gates of Fallujah, to limit harm to 50,000 civilians still believed trapped inside the city after the United Nations warned militants are holding hundreds of families in the centre as human shields.
Both operations are unfolding with the support of a US-led coalition which is targeting the ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim militants, who proclaimed a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from territory in the two neighbouring countries.
While there is no indication that the two advances were deliberately timed to coincide, they show how a variety of enemies of IS have been mobilising in recent months in what Washington and other world powers hope will be a decisive year of battle to destroy the group's pseudo-state.
The Syrian operation, which began on Tuesday, aims to drive IS from the last stretch of the frontier with Turkey it controls.
US President Barack Obama has authorised about 300 US special operations forces to operate on the ground inside Syria to help coordinate with local forces.
IS has used the border for years to receive material and recruits from the outside world, and, more recently, to send militants back to Europe to carry out attacks.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said IS had been pushed out of 16 villages near Manbij and US-led air strikes have killed 15 civilians including three children.
The operation is taking place ahead of an eventual push by the US-backed Syrian forces toward Raqqa, IS's de facto Syrian capital, which, alongside Iraq's northern city of Mosul is one of two main objectives to bring down the caliphate.
In Iraq, where Abadi's Shi'ite-led government enjoys military backing both from the US and Washington's regional adversary Iran, paused at the gates of Fallujah postpones in what is expected to be one of the biggest battles ever fought against IS.
Fallujah has been a bastion of the Sunni Muslim insurgency against both the Shi'ite-led Baghdad government and US troops, who fought the biggest battles of their 2003-2011 occupation there.
IS fighters, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh, raised their flag in the city in 2014 before sweeping through Iraq's north and west.
Abadi's initial decision to assault Fallujah seems to have gone against the plans of his US allies, who would prefer the government concentrate on Mosul, the largest Iraqi city still under control of the Sunni militants.
Although most of Fallujah's population is believed to have fled during six months of siege, 50,000 people are still thought to be trapped inside with little food.
US officials caution that territorial gains will not spell the end of IS, which has established itself outside of its self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria, spreading to Libya, Afghanistan and beyond.
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