The Latest: PM al-Abadi tells nation IS defeated in Iraq

BAGHDAD – The Latest on developments in Iraq (all times local):

7:30 p.m.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi says the fight against the Islamic State group is over after more than three years of combat operations.

In an address to the nation aired on Iraqi state television, Al-Abadi says Iraqi forces retook the last IS strongholds in the country Saturday.

Flanked by senior commanders, Al-Abadi says: "The Iraqi flag is flying high today over all Iraqi territory and at the farthest point on the border."

Iraqi forces mopped up the last pockets of IS fighters from Iraq's western deserts Saturday, securing the country's border with Syria.

IS fighters overran nearly a third of Iraqi territory, including Mosul, the country's second largest city in the summer of 2014, declaring a caliphate that stretched from northern Syria to the outskirts of Baghdad.

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2:20 p.m.

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.