US-led coalition: ISIS has lost 30 percent of its territory in Iraq, Syria

The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group says the militants have lost 30 percent of the territory they once held in Iraq and Syria.

Baghdad-based spokesman Col. Steve Warren said Tuesday that the extremists have lost 40 percent of their territory in Iraq and 20 percent in Syria, saying they are now in a "defensive crouch."

The U.S.-led coalition has been launching airstrikes since 2014 in support of Iraqi forces and Kurdish fighters.

Last month, Iraqi forces backed by U.S.-led airstrikes pushed IS out of the city center of Ramadi, a provincial capital west of Baghdad that fell to the extremists last May.

IS still holds much of northern and western Iraq, including the country's second-largest city Mosul, and large parts of Syria.