Malcolm Turnbull has said there is a “very real prospect” of beating Islamic State on the battlefield and ending its so-called caliphate, because real progress is being made towards the recapture of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.
But the Australian prime minister warned that the lone actor terrorist threat in countries such as the United States and Australia would get worse before it got better.
He also refused to say whether US-led forces involving Australian aircraft made a mistake when they bombed Syrian army troops on the weekend, despite the US already having done so.
He said the incident was being investigated to see what led to the bombing.
After meeting with security leaders in Washington overnight, Turnbull said coalition forces were continuing to seize territory from Isis (also known as Isil) and he was “more optimistic” about further gains over the next six months.
He met with the director of the National Security Agency, the director of the CIA, the director of national intelligence and the US defence secretary, Ash Carter.
“The good news in terms of the battle against Daesh or Isil is that we are continuing to roll them back,” Turnbull said.
“There is a very real prospect of completing the defeat of Daesh in the battlefield, ending their so-called caliphate. Of course the struggle against terrorism will continue for many years to come.”
He said coalition forces believed they were targeting Daesh fighters when they bombed Syrian army troops on the weekend.
He refused to be drawn on comments from the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, that the airstrike deliberately targeted Syrian forces.
“I’m not going to say anything other than it is absolutely clear, our rules of engagement are unambiguous,” he said.
“We are targeting Daesh, that terrorist group. We are absolutely not targeting or intending to target units of the Syrian army.”
Australia’s defence department has explained that coalition aircraft were conducting airstrikes in eastern Syria against what was believed to be an Isis fighting position that the coalition had been tracking for some time.
But, shortly after the bombing started, it said Russian officials advised the combined air operations centre that the targets may have been Syrian military personnel, so the bombing stopped immediately.
Russia has warned that the incident puts a “very big question mark” over the future of a precarious ceasefire agreed to by Washington and Moscow and a strongly worded statement by Russia’s foreign ministry on Sunday said that the strikes were “on the boundary between criminal negligence and direct connivance with Islamic State terrorists”.
Turnbull warned that, despite his optimism that Isis fighters would be defeated, lone wolf terrorist attacks in the west would likely get worse.
“[Isis is] on the way out in terms of their caliphate but their scourge of terrorism and the propaganda of terrorism and their extremism will, we are sure, continue,” he said.
“That is where the voices of moderation in the Muslim world are so important … that is why inclusion, moderation, proclaiming and defending and reinforcing ours, the most successful multicultural society in the world, is so critically important.”
