BAGHDAD/DOUMA, Syria: Iraqi forces Friday captured the border town of Rawah, the last remaining town under Daesh control, signaling the collapse of the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate.

The lightning recapture of the small Euphrates valley town of Rawah after a dawn offensive came as the militants also faced attack for a second day in the last town they still hold in Syria, Albukamal just over the frontier.

Daesh has lost 95 percent of the cross-border “caliphate” it declared in Iraq and Syria in 2014, the U.S.-led coalition fighting it said Wednesday. Its losses include all of its major bastions, virtually confining it to pockets of countryside.

Iraqi forces “liberated Rawah entirely, and raised the Iraqi flag over its buildings,” Lt. Gen. Abdel-Amir Yarallah said in a statement from the Joint Operations Command.

Iraqi premier Haider al-Abadi hailed the town’s “liberation in record time” and said troops would now “conduct search operations in the desert to secure the border with Syria.”

JOC spokesman Gen. Yahya Rassoul said that “militarily, Daesh has been defeated, but we are going to hunt down its remnants to eradicate its presence.”

Hisham al-Hashemi, an Iraqi expert on Daesh, said that after their loss of Rawa, the militants no longer exercised any real military or administrative power. “What has been liberated are the populated areas with demarcated boundaries,” he added.

“But the seasonal river valleys, the oases, the empty expanses of desert that make up 4 percent of Iraqi territory, are still in the hands of Daesh.”

Rawa was earlier bypassed in an offensive by the Iraqi army that resulted in the recapture of the strategic border town of Al-Qaim.

In Syria, Daesh still holds around 25 percent of the countryside of Deir al-Zor province but is under attack both by government forces and U.S.-backed Kurdish-led fighters.

In the border town of Albukamal, the Syrian army on Friday battled Daesh fighters who had mounted a surprise counterattack last week, pushing out government forces who had retaken it last month.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a new army offensive had successfully penetrated the town, with troops backed by Russian airstrikes advancing from the west, east and south.

In Moscow, the Defense Ministry said six long-range bombers flying from Russia carried out a strike on Daesh sites around Albukamal.

Russian news agency TASS cited the ministry as saying the planes had bombed fortified Daesh positions, militants, and armored vehicles.

In a sign that Daesh remains capable of inflicting serious damage despite its battlefield losses, the Observatory also said a car bombing blamed on group killed at least 26 displaced people at a checkpoint in Deir al-Zor province. It said 12 children were among the victims of the attack.

Syria’s state news agency SANA also reported a Daesh car bombing targeting “a gathering of displaced families from Deir al-Zor,” giving a toll of 20 dead and 30 wounded. Separately, shelling by the Syrian regime on the rebel-held area of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus killed at least 19 civilians, including six children, the Observatory said.

The deaths came amid an escalating cycle of tit-for-tat attacks between regime forces and rebels holding the enclave on the Syrian capital’s eastern outskirts. Rebel shelling on Friday killed three civilians.

According to the activist group, 52 civilians have been killed since Tuesday, most of them in Eastern Ghouta, which has been besieged since 2013 and where humanitarian conditions are dire.

Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council was due to vote late last night on a last-ditch bid to salvage a U.N.-led investigation tasked with identifying those behind chemical weapons attacks in Syria, diplomats said.

After the U.S. and Russian draft resolutions were rejected Thursday, Japan circulated a new draft resolution proposing a 30-day extension of the JIM, in hopes that the Security Council could reach agreement during that time to maintain the expert body.

The defeats, which came during a dramatic and highly contentious three-hour council meeting, were seen as a serious blow to efforts to hold accountable those responsible for carrying out chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

All 15 council members have said they want the JIM to remain in operation, but council diplomats said the divisions that led to Thursday’s defeats were still evident during Friday’s closed consultations.