(reuters) -- The ground attack to try to take the city should start when the air campaign is over, the spokesman, Mohammed al-Khodari, said, according to the TV channel.

Iraqi authorities had said Tal Afar, 80 km (50 miles) west of Mosul, will be the next target in the war on the terroris group that swept through swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014.

ISIS' self-proclaimed "caliphate" effectively collapsed last month, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces completed the recapture of the militants' capital in Iraq, Mosul, after a nine-month campaign.
 

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