Iraq must stop ISIS, says US commander

The senior US commander in Iraq has said that despite the ‘historic’ victory in Mosul the war against the so-called Islamic State (IS) is not over. Stephen Townsend has told the BBC that there were still IS fighters in Iraq, and said that the government should ‘reach out’ and ‘reconcile’ with Iraq’s Sunni Muslim minority to stop IS from reestablishing itself. Townsend said: “If we're to keep ISIS 2.0 from emerging, the Iraqi government is going to have to do something pretty significantly different. They're going to have to reach out and reconcile with the Sunni population, and make them feel like their government in Baghdad represents them.” Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over IS in Mosul after a nearly nine-month battle that killed thousands of civilians and displaced more than 920,000 others.