More than 25,000 members of
the Islamic State terror group have been killed in the relentless war fought by
Britain and its allies, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The campaign has halved the
number of jihadi fighters in IS-controlled areas of Syria and Iraq in just 20
months and eliminated scores of the group's leaders, with bombing raids and
missile strikes by the RAF playing a crucial role.
The revelations of how IS has
been dealt a series of devastating blows emerged in an exclusive interview with
Colonel Steve Warren, the US military spokesman for the US-led global coalition
against Islamic State.
Col Warren revealed:
The terror group's ability to
make millions of dollars every day selling oil on the black market and pay its
army of jihadis has been vastly reduced by repeated air attacks on IS-held
oilfields;
Coalition forces are preparing
to mount a final assault on their stronghold of Raqqa in Syria;
The remains of Jihadi John
were 'like a greasy spot on the ground', according to the first eyewitness
account of the drone strike that killed the British executioner.
Col Warren said: 'Much like a
boxer, Daesh [Islamic State] has taken several hard blows to the mid-section.
We believe the knees are getting weak, and the head is starting to drop, and
they are beginning to feel the effect of the exceptional pressure we've placed
on them over 20 months.'
He said 600 fighters had been
killed in the past three weeks alone, and recent precision drone strikes and
covert Special Forces missions to take out senior leaders had left the
extremists 'paranoid and in chaos'.
Strikes on IS-held oilfields
had seen its cash flow slashed by a third – leading to a 50 per cent pay cut for
its fighters – and, with the help of 650 RAF strikes, the group had been forced
to flee from 40 per cent of territory it once held in northern Iraq.
Col Warren's comments came in
the face of mounting criticism that the coalition mission to 'degrade and destroy
IS' was faltering, as almost two years of air strikes have not been able to
destroy the army of fanatics.
Islamic State extremists
seized swathes of eastern Syria in 2014 during its bloody civil war, before
sweeping into northern Iraq and proclaiming itself an Islamic caliphate.
However, Col Warren said the terror group now appeared to be on the back foot,
and announced a huge bombing campaign would soon be unleashed on its capital,
Raqqa, to pave the way for a ground attack by Kurdish troops.
He added: 'We are not going to
telegraph our timeline, because it is something they [IS] want to know, but it
is coming.'
Read more: Dailymail
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