Iraq says airstrike has killed 20 IS militants outside Mosul

BAGHDAD – An Iraqi military spokesman says an airstrike has killed 20 Islamic State militants outside the northern city of Mosul.

In a statement issued on Monday, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool says the slain militants were hiding inside a tunnel in Badoush area northwest of Mosul.

Rasool says the strike was carried out by the U.S.-led coalition. He didn’t give a date for the strike.

In the early days of IS’ onslaught in June 2014 in northern Iraq, the militants killed some 600 male Shiite inmates from Baduosh prison.

Over the past three years, IS has gradually been driven out of nearly all the territory it once held in Syria and Iraq. But the group still maintains a presence in the Syrian desert and remote areas along the Syria-Iraq border.