‘About 2,500’ Daesh militants killed in Iraq and Syria last month

WASHINGTON — The US-led coalition that has been carrying out air strikes against the Daesh group in Iraq and Syria killed about 2,500 militants last month, a military spokesman said Wednesday.

The Pentagon has previously been wary of giving body counts, but Wednesday's figures come as officials hope to portray the Daesh group as being on the defensive after the extremists suffered a series of setbacks — including last week's loss of the Iraqi city of Ramadi.

"In December, we estimate approximately 2,500 enemy fighters were killed in coalition air strikes across Iraq and Syria," Baghdad-based military spokesman Colonel Steve Warren told Pentagon reporters.

He said that since coalition air strikes began in August 2014, the Daesh group had lost as much as 22,000sq.km. — or about 40 per cent — of the territory it once held in Iraq, and about 10 per cent, or 2,000sq.km., of the land it claimed in Syria.

"We believe that ISIL [Daesh] is now in a defensive crouch," Warren said.

"Probably in May was really when they reached their culminating point of offensive operations. Since then all they have really managed to do is lose ground."

When the size of the so-called caliphate the Daesh group proclaimed 18 months ago was at its largest, Iraq accounted for a slightly bigger part of it than Syria.

A variety of Iraqi forces have reclaimed major urban centres, including Ramadi.

Warren said several, squad-sized groups of Daesh militants remained in uncleared Ramadi neighborhoods. He claimed Iraqi troops had killed 60 Daesh fighters in the city in just the past 24 hours.

Though the number of slain Daesh members is significant, the extremists have been able to fill their ranks almost as fast, especially with disaffected young men from economically and politically crippled Muslim countries in the region.

The United States last year estimated there were between 20,000 to 30,000 Daesh members operating in Iraq and Syria, and Warren repeated that assessment Wednesday.

Despite suffering defeats, the Daesh group has pushed for new gains elsewhere, including in strife-torn Libya where the militants are trying to seize coastal export terminals.