More than 10,000 jihadists have been killed in air strikes against the Islamic State group over a nine-month coalition campaign, US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday.
“We have seen enormous losses from Daesh (IS), more than 10,000 since the beginning of the campaign and this will end up having an impact,” Blinken told French radio, without specifying whether the losses were in Iraq or Syria.
Blinken was speaking a day after an international conference in Paris in which 20 or so representatives of the anti-IS coalition pledged support for Baghdad’s plan to claw back territory from the marauding jihadists who have conquered large parts of Iraq and Syria.
Militants of Islamic State (IS) stand just before an air strike on Tilsehir hill near Turkish border on October 23, 2014, at Yumurtalik village, in Sanliurfa province ©Bulent Kilic (AFP/File)
The coalition’s strategy has been criticised for relying on air strikes without committing boots on the ground, but Blinken stressed there had been “significant progress”.
Islamic State now controls “25 percent less of Iraq after nine months, a lot of their equipment has been destroyed and many Daesh members have been eliminated,” Blinken said.
He nevertheless acknowledged the “resilience” of the group after the coalition has launched about 4,000 air strikes on them.
US officials have in the past put the militants’ total estimated force at 30,000.
But a State Department spokeswoman, Marie Harf, cautioned that Islamic State continued to replace fighters “taken off the battlefield.”
source:dailymail.co.uk
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