President Donald Trump says Islamic State's ousting from its Syrian stronghold as a milestone in the US fight against terrorism and a step toward a political transition and lasting peace in Syria.
That assessment, in a statement released on Saturday, runs counter to warnings in recent days from his national security aides that the militants remain fully capable of striking American interests.
There are no signs of an impending political transition, with Syrian President Bashar Assad's government newly strengthened.
Kurdish-led forces on Friday declared victory in Raqqa, the extremists' self-declared capital, where they had terrorised the population for four years.
Trump called it "a critical breakthrough in our worldwide campaign to defeat ISIS and its wicked ideology" and said "the end of the ISIS caliphate is in sight".
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He cited his efforts to empower US military forces on the ground, and repeated his claim that more had been done to defeat the group in recent months "than in the past several years".
The US "will soon transition into a new phase" in Syria, Trump said, and offer support to local security forces. He said the US will back diplomatic negotiations to end the violence, allow refugees to return safely home, and "yield a political transition that honours the will of the Syrian people".
The US military this past week estimated that 6500 IS fighters remain in eastern Syria and western Iraq, many concentrated along the Euphrates River valley straddling the border. Those fighters pose an insurgent threat in both countries and an ideological threat globally.
