“Over the last two days, the Iraqi security forces and the coalition conducted strikes against two large concentrations of [ISIL] vehicles and fighters”, Pentagon spokesman Matthew Allen said.
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After declaring Fallujah IS-free, coalition and Iraqi planes attacked a series of convoys of suspected IS fighters and their families outside the city.
Lt. General Abdul Wahab al-Saadi, Iraqi commander of the Falllujah operation said some 1,800 ISIL jiahdists were killed in the month-long battle for Fallujah.
After territorial losses, the Islamic State often turns to increased militant attacks in and around Baghdad.
They said at least 260 vehicles were destroyed and 150 militants killed in strikes that began late Tuesday as routed jihadists attempted to leave their last positions west of the city in huge convoys.
The JOC said that the majority of the strikes were carried out by Iraqi aircraft and that US-led coalition warplanes joined the operation later.
A government spokesman acknowledged that authorities had been surprised by the wave of displaced, and said an emergency allocation of another $8.5 million in aid was approved earlier this month. “They said that they didn’t come to fight”, he said.
He said his men attacked the convoy anyway, and lost five fighters in the ensuing fight. However, it was not clear how the dead were counted and identified. Despite saying that families had fled, Rasoul later said no women had been killed.
The U.S.-backed New Syrian Army said it was forced to withdraw its forces to its base at Tanf near the Jordanian border after launching what appears to have been a poorly conceived offensive aimed at capturing the strategically important eastern Syrian town of Abu Kamal on the Syrian-Iraqi border.
Colonel Chris Garver, a spokesperson for the US-led anti-ISIS campaign, said Syrian Arab fighters were establishing “footholds” on the southern and western edges of Manbij, and had seized entrances to an intricate jihadist tunnel complex.
A video purporting to show a major air attack on Isis militants near Fallujah has been released. The terror group “was not monolithic” in Fallujah Garver said, as cited by the Military Times.
They were fighters who had fled Fallujah and its surroundings and gathered in Hussay, he said. “Why would they drive more than 500 cars in an exposed agricultural area?” Some speculate that this convoy was just a desperate militant escape measure to avoid the advance of Iraqi ground forces.
And “we know the Iraqi security forces destroyed more”. US officials estimated that about 55 ISIS vehicles were destroyed by USA airstrikes.
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The IS vehicles were attempting to flee to the desert southwest of Fallujah, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
