Daesh will be completely defeated in Iraq this year, Iraqi state television quoted Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi as saying on Tuesday.
Daesh’s cross-border “caliphate” effectively collapsed in July, when US-backed Iraqi forces captured Mosul, the group’s de facto capital in Iraq, after a nine-month battle.
The group’s last territory in Iraq is now a stretch skirting the western border with Syria following the fall of the town of Hawija and surrounding areas on Oct. 5 in an offensive by US-backed Iraqi forces.
Al-Abadi’s remarks came as a Kurdish security official said hundreds of suspected Daesh militants surrendered last week to Kurdish authorities after the extremist group was driven out of its last stronghold in northern Iraq.
The suspects were part of a group of men who fled toward Kurdish-held lines when Iraqi government forces captured the Daesh base in Hawija, the official said.
The report of the Daesh militants fleeing, rather than fighting to the finish as in previous battles, suggested their morale may be fading, according to Hisham Al-Hashimi, a Baghdad-based expert on Daesh affairs.
“They no longer seem to believe in the cause,” said Hashimi, who met some of those who surrendered in the Dibis camp near Kirkuk.
He said they had fled to the Kurdish-held region to avoid summary executions at the hands of vengeful Sunni Arab tribesmen and Iranian-trained and armed Shiite Muslim paramilitaries who assisted the Iraqi army’s offensive on Hawija.
Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi released an audio recording two weeks ago that indicated he was alive, after several reports he had been killed. He urged his followers to keep up the fight despite setbacks in Iraq and Syria.
“Approximately 1,000 men surrendered over the last week. Not all, however, are terrorists,” said the security official in Irbil, the northern Iraqi base of the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government.
They handed themselves in to Kurdish Peshmerga forces near the Kurdish-held oil city of Kirkuk, east of Hawija, he said. “It’s fair to say hundreds probably are ISIS (Daesh) members, but that will be clear after the debriefs.”
The town of Hawija and surrounding areas fell on Oct. 5 in an offensive by US-backed Iraqi government Shiite paramilitary groups known as Popular Mobilization, as well as Sunni tribal combatants.
Daesh’s last territory in Iraq is now a stretch skirting the western border with Syria, including the border town of Al-Qaim.
The militants also hold areas on the Syrian side of the border, but are retreating there in the face of two sets of hostile forces — a US-backed, Kurdish-led coalition and Syrian regime troops with foreign Shiite militias backed by Iran and Russia.
Daesh’s cross-border “caliphate” effectively collapsed in July when US-backed Iraqi forces captured Mosul, the group’s de facto capital in Iraq, in a nine-month battle.