BAGHDAD (AP) — A senior Iraqi military commander says his country's war against the Islamic State group is over.

In an announcement Saturday, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Rasheed Yar Allah says combat operations against the extremists have concluded after Iraqi forces retook control of the country's border with Syria.

The statement says "all Iraqi lands are liberated from terrorist Daesh gangs and our forces completely control the international Iraqi-Syrian borders." Daesh is an Arabic acronym for IS.

IS fighters overran nearly a third of Iraqi territory, including Mosul, the country's second largest city, in the summer of 2014.

Over the past three and a half years, Iraqi ground forces closely backed by the U.S.-led coalition have retaken all the territory once held by extremists, but the group remains capable of carrying out insurgent attacks.