IS controls less than 7pc of Iraq territory

The Islamic State group now controls less than seven percent of Iraq, down from the 40 percent it held nearly three years ago, a military spokesman said yesterday.

Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes and other support are now battling IS inside second city Mosul, after retaking much of the other territory the jihadists had seized.

"Daesh controlled 40 percent of Iraqi land" in 2014, Brigadier General Yahya Rasool told reporters.

"As of March 31 (this year), they only held 6.8 percent of Iraqi territory," said Rasool, the spokesman of the Joint Operations Command coordinating the anti-jihadist effort.

The most brutal organisation in modern jihad shocked the world when it took over Mosul in June 2014 and then swept across much of the country's Sunni Arab heartland. Its reach in Iraq peaked in August the same year when a second offensive saw it take over areas of northern Iraq that were home to various minorities.

Iraqi forces retook control of the eastern side of the city, which is divided by the Tigris River, in January and have since mid-February been battling die-hard jihadists holed up in their last west Mosul redoubts.