ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – An estimated 800-900 ISIS militants have been killed since the beginning of the ongoing operation to recapture the Iraqi city of Mosul, US General Joseph Votel said on Thursday. “Just in the operations over the last week and a half associated with Mosul, we estimate they’ve probably killed about 800-900 ISIS fighters,” Votel, the commander of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), told AFP. The Mosul operation began on October 17. Since then most of the fighting on the ground has been around the city where Iraqi Army and Kurdish Peshmerga forces have been clearing towns and villages with US-led coalition air support. Only the Iraqi Army will enter the city on the ground to rout the militants out. The coalition has said that it “does not use a casualty count as a measure of effectiveness in the campaign to ultimately defeat (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria.” The US has also estimated that there are approximately 3,500 to 5,000 ISIS militants in the city, with up to another 2,000 in the wider region. Since the encirclement of the city ISIS is unable to move in large convoys or substantially reinforce and resupply its forces entrenched in Mosul.
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