This morning’s defence news includes reporting on Iraqi efforts to liberate Fallujah from Daesh control and continued coverage of how serving SAS soldiers were named in The Queen’s birthday honours list.
Iraq
BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme included a report about the current ground offensive to liberate the Iraqi city of Fallujah from Daesh control. The report highlighted that while life is difficult for the Iraqi Army – Daesh have deep defences with lots of tunnels and IED belts – progress is being made.
Writing in his blog last week the Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said:
We are playing a major supporting role in the operations to retake Fallujah. Since the start of the Iraqi operation, the RAF have attacked 51 targets in the area – destroying bunkers, tunnels, weapons factories, ammunition dumps, sniper teams and artillery. RAF E3D Sentry aircraft are helping coordinate the coalition aircraft over the operational area and our intelligence and surveillance gathering assets are identifying and tracking the enemy, enabling RAF Tornados, Typhoons and Reapers to help clear a path for the brave Iraqi troops.
All this whilst continuing to conduct strikes against other Daesh targets in Syria and elsewhere in Iraq.
You can read the full blog here.
Honours list
The Times and The Scottish Sun follow up yesterday’s story that an inquiry has begun into how serving SAS soldiers were named in the Queen’s birthday honours list. An MOD statement is carried in The Times to say that the error was soon identified and was taken down. Our full statement on this issue is below.
An MOD spokesperson said:
We are aware of an error regarding Queen’s birthday honours recipient details published online on 11 June. The error was soon identified and the list was taken down.
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