45000 Islamic State Fighters Killed, Remaining Easy Targets: US General

Over the past 11 months, the US and its allies have killed about 45,000 Islamic State (IS) terrorists, a top US commander estimated.

"We estimate that over the past 11 months, we’ve killed about 25,000 enemy fighters. When you add that to the estimated 20,000 who have been previously killed, that’s 45,000 enemy fighters taken off the battlefield," US Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, who directs the US-led Global Coalition to Counter IS in Iraq and Syria, was quoted as saying in a US DoD report.

He was speaking to reporters during his final Pentagon press briefing via Skype from Baghdad, Iraq, MacFarland shared his counter-IS campaign observations from the past eleven months while he was commander of the Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF–OIR), the joint task force established by the international coalition against the terror group. "The number of fighters on the front line has diminished," MacFarlkand told Pentagon reporters.

"They’ve diminished not only in quantity but also in quality -- we don’t see them operating nearly as effectively as they have in the past, which makes them even easier targets for us," he added.