The Islamic State group has lost nearly 90 percent of the territory it controlled in 2014, when it proclaimed a "caliphate" straddling Iraq and Syria, the US-led coalition said Tuesday. "Our partners have removed ISIS from 87 percent of territory they once held and liberated over 6.5 million people," coalition spokesman Ryan Dillon said on social media, using another acronym for IS.
In a separate statement, the coalition, formed after former US president Barack Obama sent warplanes to Iraq in a bid to stop the IS genocide of the Yazidi minority, said it had trained close to 120,000 forces in Iraq and more than 12,000 in Syria. It estimated 3,000 to 7,000 IS fighters were still active in both countries.