Iraqi commanders said Thursday that Daesh group terrorists fleeing their once emblematic bastion of Fallujah had taken a heavy toll from strikes by both Iraqi and US-led coalition aircraft.
They said at least 260 vehicles were destroyed and 150 militants killed in strikes that began late on Tuesday as routed terrorists attempted to leave their last positions west of the city in huge convoys.
“Our heroes in the military aviation destroyed more than 200 vehicles,” Yahya Rasool, the spokesman of the Joint Operations Command coordinating the fight against Daesh, said.
The ministry of defense released aerial footage showing dozens of vehicles being taken out.
Rasool said commandos had also seized large quantities of weapons and ammunition. He said at least 150 Daesh ultras were killed in the strikes, although it was not clear how the dead were counted and identified.
Rasool was referring to a first series of strikes on a massive convoy of several hundred vehicles heading south of Fallujah toward the desert, apparently to areas Daesh still controls near the border with Syria.
Another 60 Daesh vehicles were destroyed later by airstrikes conducted by Iraqi and US-led coalition aircraft on a convoy heading northwest of Fallujah, Anbar Operations Command chief Ismail Mahalawi told AFP.
“This is a desperate attempt on the part of the terrorists to flee to their areas in Al-Qaim near the Syrian border and Tharthar,” Mahalawi said.
The first strikes broke up a massive initial convoy that stretched several kilometers.
Some left their vehicles and hid in a spot which was subsequently struck by Iraqi aircraft, resulting in a very high death toll, he said.
Fragments of the convoy were able to move on and some more vehicles were destroyed in subsequent strikes.
The head of Iraq’s army aviation said many of the terrorists killed were foreigners. “Most of them were foreign fighters who refused to surrender to our forces” during the Fallujah operation, Lt. Gen. Hamed Al-Maliki said.
“They left corpses in the desert and took some of the wounded with them,” he said.

Source: Arab News