Iraq's premier expressed confidence Friday that the country's struggling army is capable of retaking the city of Mosul from the Islamic State group. The chief problem, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told a gathering of political and economic leaders in Davos, is that Iraqi forces in the area are currently split and need to join up. "That's why we are fighting now to make sure that that road link is connected and open for our forces to move forward," he said.

"We need to have a liaison between the rest of the Iraqi forces and (Kurdish) peshmerga and the coalition partners, and it can be done," said Abadi, claiming that IS fighters' morale was running low. "In some instances the (IS) fighters just flee, they don't fight," he said.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2015