US envoy: 'This perverse caliphate is shrinking'

The Obama administration's diplomatic liaison in the fight against the Islamic State group said on Sunday that the extremists had been losing control over territory.

"This perverse caliphate is shrinking," declared Brett McGurk.

The presidential envoy to a 66-member anti-IS coalition also told a news conference that the tide had turned in the ideological battle against the group.

He described a round-the-clock anti-IS propaganda campaign involving companies such as Facebook and YouTube and the governments of Jordan, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates.

"For every pro-Daesh Twitter handle, there are now six calling out its lies and countering its message," McGurk said, referring to IS by its Arabic acronym.

US officials said earlier this year that the military had ramped up cyber-operations against the group.

The officials said at the time that operations included efforts by US Cyber Command at Fort Meade, Maryland, to prevent the group from using the internet and social media to communicate and distribute propaganda aimed at attracting and inspiring recruits.

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In his news conference, McGurk singled out Jordan as an example of what he called Washington's "sustainable strategy" of eschewing boots on the ground for local, regional and Islamic forces against IS.

He said Jordan had been conducting weekly airstrikes against IS targets and was involved in intelligence-gathering and anti-IS propaganda.

The Islamic State group has suffered a recent series of military setbacks and lost territory in both Iraq and Syria.

McGurk said the group was on the defensive.

But as Islamic State group militants are pushed back along frontlines, the group is increasingly turning to insurgency-style attacks to keep pressure on the Iraqi government. Such attacks have left more than 100 dead in the past week.

IS launched a coordinated assault on Sunday on a natural gas plant north of Baghdad that killed at least 14 people, while a string of other bomb attacks in or close to the capital killed 15 others, Iraqi officials said.

While IS is losing ground in Iraq and Syria, its global affiliates appear to have grown in strength in countries including Libya.