Foreign fighters flee as Islamic State fights for last inch of caliphate

In the end, the British Islamic State fighter decided it was not worth paying with his life.

Cornered in a nine-mile-square patch of uninhabitable earth in eastern Syria, the jihadist surrendered to the UK-allied Syrian Democratic Forces rather than battle to the death.

Like the hundreds of mostly foreign Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) militants left fighting for the last of the self-declared caliphate, he stood little chance of blending in and fleeing as his Arab compadres had done.

The Briton was among 50 foreigners who handed themselves over to the SDF this week, according to a commander with the Kurdish-led forces, who predicted the rest would be defeated within days.

“The SDF…