Sunday, April 17, 2016

Coalition air strikes kill 25,000 jihadis: Islamic State army is cut by half as Allies plan assault on its stronghold


More than 25,000 members of the Islamic State terror group have been killed in the relentless war fought by Britain and its allies, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. The campaign has halved the number of jihadi fighters in IS-controlled areas of Syria and Iraq in just 20 months and eliminated scores of the group's leaders, with bombing raids and missile strikes by
the RAF playing a crucial role.
The revelations of how IS has been dealt a series of devastating blows emerged in an exclusive interview with Colonel Steve Warren, the US military spokesman for the US-led global coalition against Islamic State.
Col Warren revealed:

  • The terror group's ability to make millions of dollars every day selling oil on the black market and pay its army of jihadis has been vastly reduced by repeated air attacks on IS-held oilfields;

  • Coalition forces are preparing to mount a final assault on their stronghold of Raqqa in Syria;

  • The remains of Jihadi John were 'like a greasy spot on the ground', according to the first eyewitness account of the drone strike that killed the British executioner.
Col Warren said: 'Much like a boxer, Daesh [Islamic State] has taken several hard blows to the mid-section. We believe the knees are getting weak, and the head is starting to drop, and they are beginning to feel the effect of the exceptional pressure we've placed on them over 20 months.'
He said 600 fighters had been killed in the past three weeks alone, and recent precision drone strikes and covert Special Forces missions to take out senior leaders had left the extremists 'paranoid and in chaos'.

Strikes on IS-held oilfields had seen its cash flow slashed by a third – leading to a 50 per cent pay cut for its fighters – and, with the help of 650 RAF strikes, the group had been forced to flee from 40 per cent of territory it once held in northern Iraq.
Col Warren's comments came in the face of mounting criticism that the coalition mission to 'degrade and destroy IS' was faltering, as almost two years of air strikes have not been able to destroy the army of fanatics.
Islamic State extremists seized swathes of eastern Syria in 2014 during its bloody civil war, before sweeping into northern Iraq and proclaiming itself an Islamic caliphate. However, Col Warren said the terror group now appeared to be on the back foot, and announced a huge bombing campaign would soon be unleashed on its capital, Raqqa, to pave the way for a ground attack by Kurdish troops.
He added: 'We are not going to telegraph our timeline, because it is something they [IS] want to know, but it is coming.'

Speaking from his base in Baghdad, he also said it was only a matter of time before either a US or a British drone targeted the elusive IS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Britain began air strikes in Iraq in September 2014 as part of a global force to wipe out IS. Last December, Parliament voted to extend the RAF's mission to hit targets in Syria. So far, British pilots have flown more than 2,200 sorties and made 640 air strikes against IS targets in both countries.
The RAF is using ten Tornado GR4 jets, six Typhoon combat aircraft, and Reaper drones, piloted 3,000 miles away in Lincolnshire.

Col Warren said the coalition had been targeting IS in a 'three-pronged attack' by hitting battlefield fighters, taking out leaders in precision strikes and attacking oilfields.
Other IS industrial targets being hit were arms depots and warehouses where the group stored hundreds of millions of pounds in local currencies and US dollars.
'Using intelligence methods, we can discover where this cash is and just incinerate them from the air, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars which we have seen go up in smoke,' he said.
Col Warren claimed that half of the IS fighting force was now dead, and the group may have fewer than 30,000 soldiers left.
And the flow of new recruits has slowed, thanks to better enforcement of border controls by neighbouring Turkey.
The killing of IS chiefs has mainly been through drone strikes, but on at least two occasions US Special Forces have been deployed to kill key leaders of the group, he said.
The coalition has killed more than 100 leaders, including Omar al-Shishani, IS's reputed 'Minister for War', who had a £3 million bounty placed on his head.
Shishani was killed in an air strike last month in Shadadi in eastern Syria, where he was sent to bolster flagging IS fighters. 

Source: Mail online

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