Pentagon Report: A Year After Its Caliphate Declaration The Islamic State Is Still A 'Potent' Force

Turkish soldiers stand guard near the Mursitpinar border gate in Suruc, Sanliurfa province, Turkey, as Syrian Kurds wait in tents behind the border fences to cross into Turkey, June 27, 2015. Islamic State attacked the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani on Thursday, which lies to the northwest of Hasaka on the Turkish border. It is reported to have killed at least 145 people in and around Kobani in what the Observatory has described as one of the worst massacres carried out by Islamic State in Syria. The YPG has described the attack on Kobani as "a suicide mission" rather than an attempt to capture the town. Murad Sezer/Reuters

Reuters: Islamic State seen as potent force a year after caliphate declaration: Pentagon

A year after Islamic State declared a caliphate on territory seized in Iraq and Syria, the al Qaeda splinter group faces military pressure from a U.S.-led coalition but remains a potent force holding key cities, the Pentagon said on Monday.

Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Defense Department spokesman, said the militant group has lost a quarter of the land it controlled at the height of its expansion and has broken and run on several occasions in northern Syria in the face of an offensive by Kurdish-led forces.

But Islamic State militants still control the Iraqi city of Mosul, where leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi appeared last July to declare himself the head of the new caliphate, which had been proclaimed on June 29, 2014. The group recently captured the key Sunni city of Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's vast western province of Anbar.

Update: With 'Caliphate' One Year Old, IS Remains Strong -- VOA

WNU Editor: Nothing new in this Pentagon report ..... it is stating the obvious. If there is a bright note ... it is that the Islamic State has lost territory in the past few months, and their fighters have fled when confronted by disciplined Kurdish forces.