Almost 100% of territory regained from IS: Trump

DAVOS, Switzerland: US President Donald Trump said Friday that US-backed coalition forces had won back almost 100 percent of territory occupied by the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

“The coalition to defeat ISIS (IS) has retaken almost 100 percent of the territory once held by these killers in Iraq and Syria,” Trump said in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“There is still more fighting and work to be done and to consolidate our gains.”The US-led coalition said on Tuesday it had killed as many as 150 IS fighters in an operation in the middle Euphrates River Valley in Syria, where some remained entrenched.

But on Wednesday the group claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on Save the Children’s office in east Afghanistan that left at least two people dead and 14 others wounded. “We are committed to ensuring that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for terrorists who want to commit mass murder to our civilian populations,” Trump added in his speech.

US President Donald Trump drew boos from the audience at the elite Davos summit when he attacked the press, repeating his frequent charge that media critical of him report “fake” news.

“As a businessman I was always treated really well by the press... it wasn’t until I became a politician that I realised how nasty, how mean, how vicious and how fake the press can be,” Trump said in his address to the World Economic Forum gathering.

Some of the 1,500 delegates in the packed conference hall booed at those remarks, made during a question and answer session after an otherwise conciliatory address by Trump to the business world.

Speaking to reporters earlier as he arrived at the centre in the snowbound Swiss resort, Trump had specifically dismissed as “fake news” a bombshell report about him in the New York Times. The newspaper cited four anonymous sources as saying that Trump had ordered the firing of Russia investigation special prosecutor Robert Mueller last year, but that he had to back off when the White House counsel threatened to resign. Two demonstrators in white T-shirts protested quietly against Trump in the lobby outside the hall where he was speaking in Davos.