BAGHDAD: Daesh now controls less than 7 percent of Iraq, down from the 40 percent it held nearly three years ago, a military spokesman said Tuesday.
“Daesh controlled 40 percent of Iraqi land” in 2014, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool told reporters.
“As of March 31 (this year), they only held 6.8 percent of Iraqi territory,” said Rasool, the spokesman of the Joint Operations Command.
Speaking at the same press conference, the spokesman for the US-led coalition vowed that Iraq would not be abandoned after the recapture of Mosul.
“Once that task is accomplished, the coalition will be here to support our Iraqi partners as they eliminate Daesh from every corner of Iraq,” Col. John Dorrian said.
“Though the fighting is going to be very hard... this enemy is completely surrounded. They aren’t going anywhere — they will be defeated and the people of Mosul will be free,” he said.
“Every strike that we conduct, we conduct using precision-guided munitions. Every strike that we conduct is coordinated directly with the Iraqi security forces,” Dorrian said.
Talking about the Daesh-held Syrian city of Raqqa, Dorrian said: “Ultimately we’re isolating Raqqa and we are going to, at a time that our partners choose, move in and liberate that city.”
Dorrian said the operation to liberate Raqqa is the equivalent in Syria of what’s being “done to eliminate the enemy” in the Iraqi city of Mosul.
Meanwhile, US-backed forces advanced to within 2 km of a key stronghold near Raqqa, and a counter-attack by the militants was repulsed, officials said.
Separately, Russia’s Defense Ministry said two Russian officers have been killed and one gravely wounded in a mortar attack in Syria. The ministry did not specify when or where the attack took place.
Daesh now controls ‘less than 7% of Iraq’
Daesh now controls ‘less than 7% of Iraq’
In major policy shift on Syria, UN Security Council lifts sanctions on Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham
- Move reflects evolving Syrian political landscape in the post-Assad era, ending a global freeze on assets, travel ban and arms embargo
NEW YORK CITY: The UN Security Council on Friday removed Al-Nusra Front, the militant group that evolved into Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, from its so-called Daesh and Al-Qaeda Sanctions List.
The move signals a major shift in international policy toward Syria’s evolving political landscape in the post-Assad era, and ends a global freeze on assets, travel ban and arms embargo that have been imposed on the group since 2014.
Al-Nusra Front and Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham were led by Ahmad Al-Sharaa, formerly Abu Mohammed Al-Julani, who is now Syria’s president and was a leading figure in the offensive that toppled the Assad regime.
The consensus decision by the Security Council’s sanctions committee was announced by the UK, which holds the presidency of the Security Council this month and was acting in the absence of the chair of the committee. It followed a request by the new Syrian authorities to delist “Al-Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant.”
The decision means measures that were applied to Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham under Security Council Resolution 2734, adopted in 2024, no longer apply. As a result, UN member states are notrequired to freeze the group’s funds, restrict the movement of its representatives, or block the supply or transfer of arms and related materiel.
Al-Nusra Front was added to the sanctions list for its ties to Al-Qaeda and involvement in the financing and execution of militant activities during the war in Syria. The UN initially continued to treat the group’s successor organization, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, as a listed alias.
Al-Sharaa has said the group severed all prior transnational jihadist links and is now solely focused on local Syrian matters.
