Shi’ite fighters from Saraya al-Salam, loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr are pictured during a patrol in Abu Ghraib district, west of Baghdad, on Thursday.

WASHINGTON: The head of US troops in the Middle East said on Friday Iraqi forces are “incrementally” recapturing ground from Islamic State militants who seized much of the country’s northwest this year, but he added that major Iraq advances will take time.

“They are doing some things now to incrementally recapture ground that’s been lost,” General Lloyd Austin, head of US Central Command, said in his first news conference about the conflict. He cited the Kurdish operation around Mosul Dam and their recapture of the border post of Rabia.

 
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