French warplanes bombed a militant Islamic State (IS) group communications hub near Mosul in northern Iraq overnight, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Thursday.
“Last night we bombed a Daesh telecommunications centre, a propaganda centre, near Mosul,” Le Drian told BFMTV, using an Arabic acronym for the IS militants.
“We have struck seven times since Monday,” Le Drian said of the French bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria.
“Daesh is pulling back in Iraq” where it has lost control of the cities of Sinjar and Ramadi, Le Drian said.
IS fighters seized Raqqa in Syria in early 2014 and declared it the capital of their so-called caliphate. In June the same year, the militants seized Mosul.
Another major Iraqi city, Ramadi, fell in May 2015 but local Iraqi forces ─ backed by coalition air support and troop training ─ recaptured the town at the end of last month in what was seen as a major blow for the militants.
Sinjar was recaptured in November with the help of Kurdish forces.
Since coalition air strikes began in August 2014, the Pentagon estimates IS has lost about 40 per cent of the territory it once held in Iraq, and about 10pc of the land it claimed in Syria.
“The battle for Mosul will have to be taken on one day,” Le Drian said, adding that it would be “much more complicated. Iraqis and Kurds must be sufficiently war-hardened to take on this battle.”
Defence ministers from the seven countries taking part in the anti-IS coalition ─ France, the United States, Australia, Germany, Italy, Britain and the Netherlands ─ will meet in Paris on January 20 to discuss their military strategy.