The US-led coalition battling the Islamic State group has unleashed an unprecedented wave of air strikes in support of Iraq's operation to retake Mosul, American officials said Monday.
A week after Iraqi forces launched the offensive to push IS militants from their last major bastion in the country, the US envoy to the anti-IS coalition said on Monday that the air war had reached its highest level yet.
"All objectives met thus far and more coalition air strikes than any other 7-day period of war against ISIL," Brett McGurk said on Twitter, using another acronym for IS.
"There were 32 strikes with 1,776 munitions delivered against Daesh (IS) targets for the week of October 17-October 23," the spokesman for the coalition, Colonel John Dorrian, told AFP.
Dorrian stressed that each strike may include multiple targets over a period of hours.
"These engagements destroyed 136 Daesh fighting positions, destroyed 18 tunnels that the enemy has been using to hide and infiltrate areas, and destroyed 26 vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, among other targets," he said.
US Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter was in Iraq on Saturday and Sunday to review the military operation, the largest in the country since US forces withdrew in 2011.
The United States leads a 60-nation coalition -- which also includes Britain and France -- that has provided support in the form of thousands of air strikes, training for Iraqi forces and advisers on the ground.
According to Pentagon figures, the coalition has carried out more than 15,800 strikes since the operation was launched in August 2014, including some 10,200 in Iraq and about 5,600 in Syria.
