Air strikes killed 6,000 ISIS fighters: U.S. ambassador

The U.S.-led airstrikes have “taken more than half” of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group’s leadership, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Stuart Jones told Al Arabiya News Channel in an interview aired Thursday.

Jones described the airstrikes as having a “devastating” effect on ISIS after Baghdad criticized Washington for not doing “enough” to eliminate the Islamist group.

“We estimate that the airstrikes have now killed more than 6,000 ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq,” Jones said.
The U.S. ambassador added that the airstrikes have “destroyed more than a thousand of ISIS vehicle inside Iraq.”

While he said the statistic were “not so important in themselves,” he said “they do show the degradation of ISIS.”

“They show ISIS inability to supply forces inside Iraq,” he said.

Meanwhile, Kurdish forces in northern Iraq said Wednesday that they had cleared ISIS insurgents from nearly 500 square kilometers of territory and broken a key ISIS supply line between the city of Mosul and strongholds to the west near Syria.

The Kurdish forces were assisted by air strikes that began the night before.

On Wednesday U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry headed for London to co-host talks on the fight against ISIS militants, insisting the 60-plus coalition of nations was determined to win the battle.