More than a hundred Takfiri Daesh militants have been killed as Iraqi government troops backed by volunteer forces launched an operation in the country’s crisis-hit western province of Anbar, and established full control over an area there.

The commander of the Burraq forces of the Popular Mobilization Units, Wasiq Fartousi, told the Arabic-language al-Sumaria satellite television network that his forces together with Iraqi security personnel and tribal fighters managed to seize complete control of the Albu-Hayat area in Haditha District, 160 kilometers (99 miles) west of the provincial capital, Ramadi, on Wednesday.

They killed 115 Daesh terrorists during the operation. Fartousi added that Arab nationals as well as citizens of a number of Western countries were among the slain Takfiris.

Meanwhile, Daesh terrorists have reportedly executed a high-profile Iraqi physicist in the country’s troubled northern province of Nineveh over his refusal to build biological and chemical weapons for the militants.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="555"] This file photo shows Daesh militants in an undisclosed location in Iraq.[/caption]

An informed provincial source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Daesh Takfiris killed the president of the Physics Department at the Faculty of Science of the University of Mosul in the northern Iraqi city, which is located some 400 kilometers (250 miles) north of the capital, Baghdad, on Wednesday evening.

The source added that the execution of the physicist, whose name has not been published yet, took place in a public square in Mosul in front of a large number of onlookers.

In October 2014, the US military said it had evidence showing that Daesh militants in Iraq and Syria were seeking biological weapons.

“Intelligence has discovered that ISIS (Daesh) intends to pursue biological agents and also is trying to figure out how to weaponize bubonic plague through the use of infected animals,” Brigadier General Maria Gervais, the head of the US Army’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear School, said at the time.

By Press TV