A spokesman for the US-led coalition fighting the so-called ’Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ takfiri group said Wednesday that about 2,500 ISIL gunmen were killed in Iraq and Syria last month.

A spokesman for the US-led coalition fighting the so-called 'Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant' takfiri group said Wednesday that about 2,500 ISIL gunmen were killed in Iraq and Syria last month.

The Pentagon has long declined to provide information on the number of militants killed but Col. Steve Warren released figures about operations that portrayed militants as being on the defensive.

"In December, we estimate approximately 2,500 enemy fighters were killed in coalition airstrikes across Iraq and Syria," the Baghdad-based Warren told Pentagon reporters during a video conference.

He added that since coalition airstrikes began in August 2014, ISIL had lost nearly 14,000 square miles (22,000 square kilometers), which constitutes about 40 percent of the territory it occupied in Iraq, and about 1,200 square miles (2,000 square kilometers), or about 10 percent of territory it seized in Syria.

"We believe that ISIL is now in a defensive crouch," Warren noted "Probably in May was really when they reached their culminating point of offensive operations. Since then, all they have really managed to do is lose ground."

Noting that scores of ISIL elements are yet to be cleared in neighborhoods in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, Warren claimed that Iraqi forces have killed 60 ISIL terrorists in the city in the past 24 hours.

Ramadi fell to the Iraqi forces last week after being under ISIL control for months.