ISIS has lost most of the territory it has held in Iraq since 2014, an Iraqi military spokesman said on Tuesday.
ISIS has lost most of the territory it has held in Iraq since 2014, an Iraqi military spokesman said on Tuesday.
At the height of its power, the militant group controlled about 40 percent of Iraq, joint operations command spokesman Brigadier General YahyaRasool told a news conference.
That area has been whittled down to about 6.8 percent of Iraqi territory after extensive military operations, which are still going on in the city of Mosul, he said.
ISIS militants still control the towns of Qaim, Tal Afar and Hawija in Iraq, as well as Raqqa, their de-facto capital in Syria. The coalition battling the terroristsis made up of tens of thousands of members of the Iraqi security forces, led by the army, and thousands of Iraqi volunteers, commonly referred to as the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU).
The battle for Mosul, one of Iraq’s largest cities, began last October and the outcome will likely determine whether Iraq’s various sects can work together to keep the country from fracturing. The eastern half of the city is now completely under the control of Iraqi security forces, Rasool said.
