UK Foreign Sec. says (IS) lost 90 percent of its territories in Iraq, Syria

UK Foreign Secretary said Wednesday that Daesh (So-called Islamic State (IS) have lost 90 percent of the territory they once held in Iraq and Syria, including Raqqa, their erstwhile capital, and 6 million people have been freed from their rule.

کد خبر: ۷۴۵۴۲۴

تاریخ: ۱۷ آبان ۱۳۹۶ - ۱۱:۰۳

In a speech to parliament, Johnson said that in the summer of 2014, Daesh swept down the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, occupying thousands of square miles of Iraqi territory, pillaging cities, massacring and enslaving minorities, and seeking to impose by pitiless violence a demented vision of an Islamist utopia.

Daesh had gathered strength in eastern Syria, using the opportunity created by that country's civil war to seize oilfields and carve out a base from which to launch their assault on Iraq. Today, I can tell the House that Daesh have been rolled back on every battlefront," Johnson said.

The secretary added that "the permanent defeat of Daesh in Syria, by which I mean removing the conditions that allowed them to seize large areas in the first place, will require a political settlement and that must include a transition away from the Assad regime that did so much to create the conditions for the rise of Daesh.

"How such a settlement is reached is, of course, a matter for Syrians themselves and we will continue to support the work of the United Nations Special Envoy, Staffan de Mistura, and the Geneva process," added Johnson.