A mortar blast shook the rooftop where Hunter Pugh stood watch over the last stretch of Syria controlled by the Islamic State, and he scanned the winter dawn, trying to decide whether it had been outgoing fire or an attack zeroing in on his post. The answer came from a …

The last defenders of the Islamic State terror group’s self-declared caliphate are refusing to surrender, clinging to their last sliver of land while hiding among hundreds of civilians.

The disintegration of the Islamic State’s Caliphate — which once included large portions of Iraq and Syria — may be a strategic defeat for ISIS, yet the jihadi terrorist group is very much alive. Its ideology, tactics and objectives have not altered. ISIS remains steeped in the ideology of “salafiya …