KUWAIT CITY — The commander of Canada's combat mission in Iraq says enemy fighters were very likely killed in Tuesday's airstrike north of Baghdad.
Col. Dan Constable says a Canadian laser-guided bomb hit an artillery position that had been shelling Iraqi forces involved in a localized offensive near the northern city of Bayji.
Constable says he's confident there were no civilian casualties, because extremists were the only ones operating in the area — although he offered no estimates of how many of them were killed.
He insists the air campaign is showing signs of success and that the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant is on the "defensive," hiding vehicles and equipment from the coalition surveillance aircraft.
An airstrike earlier this week hit a convoy near Mosul carrying senior ISIL members, wounding the terror group's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Constable was unable to say whether one of Canada's CP-140 Aurora spy planes helped track the target, even though it had earlier been operating in the area.
