U.S.-led coalition: ISIS has lost 30 percent of its territory

Associated Press

Iraqi security forces and allied Sunni tribal fighters place Islamic State militants’ bodies in a truck as they celebrate the repulsion of the Islamic State attack in Haditha, 150 miles northwest of Baghdad, Iraq, on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. Islamic State had captured Ramadi in May in one of its biggest advances since the U.S.-led coalition began striking the group in 2014. Recapturing the city, the provincial capital of Anbar, provided a major morale boost for Iraqi forces.

Associated Press

Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016 | 8:14 a.m.

BAGHDAD — The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group says the militants have lost 30 percent of the territory they once held in Iraq and Syria.

Baghdad-based spokesman Col. Steve Warren said Tuesday that the extremists have lost 40 percent of their territory in Iraq and 20 percent in Syria, saying they are now in a "defensive crouch."

The U.S.-led coalition has been launching airstrikes since 2014 in support of Iraqi forces and Kurdish fighters.

Last month, Iraqi forces backed by U.S.-led airstrikes pushed IS out of the city center of Ramadi, a provincial capital west of Baghdad that fell to the extremists last May.

IS still holds much of northern and western Iraq, including the country's second-largest city Mosul, and large parts of Syria.