The Islamic State group's occupation of northern Iraq and the battle to defeat it has caused more than $100 billion worth of damage, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Saturday. He was speaking during a visit to Karbala, a city holy to Shiite Muslims, where millions of pilgrims gathered Friday to mark the annual Arbaeen commemoration.

"The damage caused by the IS occupation of Iraqi cities already amounts to more than $100 billion," Abadi said. "That's just the damage to the economy and infrastructure." IS, a radical Sunni group, seized around a third of Iraq and parts of Syria in a sweeping 2014 advance. But its self-declared "caliphate" has since been decimated by multiple offensives and squeezed into a pocket of territory on the Iraqi-Syrian border. Iraqi forces launched an operation Saturday to retake the last IS-held towns in Iraq, including the Euphrates valley town of Rawa and nearby villages.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2017