Coalition seized 80.000 km in Syria, Iraq from Islamic State: Mcgurk
The US Special Presidential Envoy for the international coalition to fight ISIS Brett H. McGurk. File photo.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) A United States-led international military coalition has, so far, seized back 80.000 kilometers from Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, its envoy has said in an interview.
Brett Mcgurk, the U.S. envoy to the international coalition against Islamic State, told MBC Masr that the militant group, now having failed to establish its self-styled “caliphate” in Iraq, Syria and Libya, is currently urging its followers to head to Philippines.
According to Mcgurk, the group had brought 40.000 fighters from 110 world countries, adding that six million people had lived under the group in Iraq and Syria.
He pointed that more than two million Iraqis have been repatriated to their home regions.
Iraq is currently battling Islamic State out of its last havens. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Thursday from France that only the borderline between his country and Syria remained under the militants’ control. Joint troops have so far recaptured the group’s former capital, Mosul, the town of Tal Afar, Kirkuk’s Hawija and Anbar’s border town of Annah.
Iraq’s wa against the group since its emergence in 2014 has so far left nearly three millions homeless.