Coalition ‘air strikes drop’ as ISIL crumbles

WASHINGTON - Agence France-Presse

Coalition air strikes in Syria and Iraq fell sharply last month, a reflection of the collapse of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a U.S. Air Force general said on Nov. 7.

Brigadier General Andrew Croft, who coordinates the coalition air campaign, said there were 60 to 70 percent fewer air strikes in October than the average for the preceding eight to nine months.

“That’s indicative of the fact that ISIS [another widely used acronym for ISIL] is collapsing not only as a physical caliphate but also in ownership of land,” he told reporters in a teleconference.

“They only control about four or five percent of the original area they covered, so the number of targets has dropped dramatically, particularly in the last month.”    

He said 850 bombs were dropped during October compared to 1,800 to 2,400 a month since the start of the year.The decline came in the same month that Raqqa, ISIL’s Syrian stronghold, fell to U.S.-backed Kurdish forces.