Al-Qaim is 330 kilometers (205 miles) northwest of Fallujah.
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To the east, in the city’s industrial neighborhood, dozens of auto fix shops had been converted into vehicle bomb factories.
A third major assault is also underway in the city of Manbij in northern Syria, where an alliance of US -backed militias has begun an offensive against the Islamic State.
Tharthar is a lake north of the Euphrates surrounded by desert through which IS fighters still have lines to reach Mosul, the country’s second city and their last remaining major Iraqi hub. Now, it’s estimated to control only 14 percent of Iraqi territory, according to the office of Iraq’s prime minister.
“There was a strike on a convoy of ISIS fighters trying to leave a neighborhood on the outskirts of southern Fallujah that we struck”, the official said.
The western-backed New Syrian Army bombed ISIS positions in al-Bukamal city near the border with Iraq.
Abdul Latif Al-Hamim, head of the Iraqi Sunni Endowment, led the prayers. It shows a convoy of what are said to be dozens of ISIS vehicles fleeing the Iraqi city of Fallujah as Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) closed in.
When the airstrikes began hitting the convoy, the militants abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot, defense officials said.
Officials have not disclosed how many militants in the group, also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh, were killed in the airstrikes. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.
IS has made no statements on its Fallujah losses and the numbers could not independently be verified.
There are concerns that the militants who got away will regroup.
Syrian rebels aided by USA -led airstrikes launched an offensive against an Islamic State stronghold near the Iraqi border on Tuesday, hoping to sever one of the extremists’ main transit links between the two countries, a rebel spokesman said.
“We’re not going to defeat them within 14 months, are we?”
Also on Wednesday, the USA said it would make $2.7bn (£2bn) available to the Iraqi government to help pay for its war against IS.
“The whole operation was a test of power for the New Syrian Army, and our forces proved they can fight ISIS”, he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State.
The seizure came as an anti-ISIS force comprising Kurdish and Syrian Arab fighters hones in on the northern city of Manbij, an important waypoint between the Turkish border and Raqa, the jihadists’ de facto capital.
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However, he indicated to an “internal contradiction” in Russia’s strategy, which he suggested is “much more focused on propping up the Assad regime”.
