Top general said on Wednesday, almost 45000 jihadists have been killed in Iraq and Syria since the US-led operation started to beat the Islamic State group began two years ago.
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Although the exact numbers were not known, estimates show only up to 25,000 IS fighters now remain in the region.
“The number of fighters on the front line has diminished”, MacFarlkand told Pentagon reporters.
“As a result their attrition has accelerated here of late”, he added.
ISIS took control of swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria in 2014, taking advantage of sectarian divides and popular dissatisfaction with the ruling regimes in both countries.
The U.S. -led military effort against the IS started exactly two years ago, aimed at halting the jihadists as they swept across Iraq and Syria.
“Military success in Iraq and Syria will not necessarily mean the end of Daesh”.
In just two strikes past year, coalition planes destroyed about 400 tankers that were lined up in the desert waiting to take on illicit oil.
Looking back to when he took up the role as commander last September, MacFarland said that “eleven months ago, there were questions about our strategy, the capacity and the will of our partners” but that since then, “all these questions have been answered, not by words, but by deeds”. “I am pleased with the progress that we’ve made on the ground in Iraq and Syria”.
MacFarland, who has headed the US-led coalition for nearly a year, said he had seen major progress.
USA Today reported US troops are already operating extensively inside Syria, stating: “US Special Operations Forces are helping to identify and organise Syrian rebel groups into a force that can take on the Islamic State [ISIS]”.
The US military and its foreign allies have waged a war to drive out the Islamist terrorist group from both Iraq and Syria.
The United Nations has called for urgent aid access to Aleppo, warning that civilians are at risk from water shortages and disease as fighting has intensified.
Published on August 9, by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank, the report drew its findings from 300 foreign fighters who travelled to Iraq or Syria to join groups fighting against ISIS.
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Fighters from the group had circulated photographs of a rocket launcher, grenades, ammunition, identification cards, an encrypted radio and other equipment they said they had seized. “We don’t shoot at them, and the airstrikes don’t hit them, because they [ISIS] use the people like a shield to impede our advance”, he said.
