International coalition kills seven Islamic State fighters in Iraq
A Shi’ite volunteer wearing a mask, who has joined the Iraqi army to fight against the predominantly Sunni militants from the radical Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), looks on during a parade on a street in Kanaan, Diyala province, June 26, 2014.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) – Seven Islamic State militants were killed Wednesday in an airstrike that targeted their terrorist hotbed in al-Siniya Island in the Iraqi province of Salahuddin.
“Jet fighters of the U.S.-led international coalition targeted an underground hotbed of Islamic State in the town of Tal Aswad in Salahuddin province, leaving seven terrorists killed,” Mawazin News quoted the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service as saying in a statement.
“The troops also found a large cache of explosive charges inside the hotbed,” the statement read, adding that all the explosives have been successfully detonated inside one of the buildings, which was used by IS militants as a hideout.
Iraq declared the collapse of Islamic State’s territorial influence in November 2017 with the recapture of Rawa, a city on Anbar’s western borders with Syria, which was the group’s last bastion in Iraq.
IS declared a self-styled “caliphate” in a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria in 2014. A government campaign, backed by a U.S.-led international coalition and paramilitary forces, was launched in 2016 to retake IS-held regions, managing to retake all havens, most notably the city of Mosul, the group’s previously proclaimed capital.