Troops broke through Isis lines to the eastern city on the banks of the Euphrates some 1,400 days after it was surrounded by Western-supported Free Syrian Army (FSA) insurgents in the autumn of 2013.

Following hours of fierce fighting over the last 1.5 miles separating the two forces, the relief column met up with the city’s defenders at an army base on the western edge of the city.

The breaking of the siege sounded the death knell of the Isis death cult, now reduced to a handful of strongholds across eastern Syria and northern Iraq.