Almost half of the territory captured by IS in Iraq since 2014 has been liberated according to the Kurdish regional government in Iraq.
A top official from the Kurdish Regional government has said that half the territory captured by IS from 2014 has been liberated while he was giving an interview to Andalu agency. The regional government's top official Jabbar Yavir stated that IS lost territory because of financial barriers and difficulties. Yavir said that IS lost control over the oil wells and that they also faced significant difficulties in selling oil in the black market.
Yavir revealed that data accumulated by the Regional government shows that about 20,000 IS fighters had abandoned their posts and fled, and that IS only had an estimate of 10,000 or 15,000 fighters now.
A sunni muslim group going by the name Al-Hashdh al-Wathanii has stated that they had been successful in reclaiming 20 kilometres of land in IS territory in Mosul. The leader of this group, Atheel Al-Nujaifii said that the group aimed to reclaim all of the IS held territory in Mosul by the end of this year.
The Americans have accumulated a specialized military coalition to fight against IS, and are still carrying out military operations against IS. UN reports show that a rough estimate of 3.4 million people have left Iraq to escape IS, most of them being children and women.
