BAGHDAD (AP) — The Iraqi military says the Islamic State group has lost more than three-fourths of the territory it seized when it swept across the country in the summer of 2014.

Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, a military spokesman, says the extremist group currently controls less than 30,000 square kilometers (12,000 sq. miles) in Iraq, or 6.8 percent of the country's territory, down from more than 40 percent at its height.

The extremists have suffered a string of defeats over the past year in both Iraq and Syria, and were driven out of the eastern half of Mosul, Iraq's largest city, in January.

U.S.-backed Iraqi forces are currently battling the militants in the more densely populated western Mosul. Rasool says more than half of western Mosul has been retaken from the militants.