‘Pentagon Exaggerating Number of Daesh to Justify Buildup in Iraq’

Date: 13 August 2019 - 21:57

News ID: ۶۹۲۸۱

BAGHDAD (Dispatches) – A senior commander of Hashd al-Shaabi popular forces says the U.S. report on the presence of 14,000 Daesh terrorists in Iraq and Syria is unreal and the numbers have been exaggerated to justify American troops’ presence in the region.
"What the American sources say about the number of Daesh members and the danger of their infiltration from Syria to Iraq is an attempt to intimidate the Iraqi nation and government," Mo'ein al-Kazzemi told the Arabic-language Baghdad al-Youm news website on Tuesday.
"The Americans want to find a pretext for their continued military presence and increase their forces," he added.
Al-Kazzemi said that the Iraqi security forces are now chasing and cleansing Daesh terrorists from al-Anbar, Salahuddin, Nineveh and Diyala provinces, stressing that 'Operation Will of Victory' has shown that only a few dozens of Daesh terrorists have remained in their hideouts in Iraq.
The Iraqi army has also denied a Pentagon report that alleged approximately 14,000 Daesh terrorists were present along the Iraqi-Syrian border.
"The figure announced by the Pentagon is extremely exaggerated,” the spokesman for the Joint Operations Command, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, said in a press statement.
Rasool added that the Iraqi military had recently launched their third phase of Operation Will of Victory, which is meant to rid Iraq of the last Daesh sleeper cells.
The third phase began last week and is currently being conducted inside the Diyala governorate.