AFP, PARIS: French warplanes bombed an Islamic State communications hub near Mosul in northern Iraq overnight, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Thursday. “Last night we bombed a Daesh telecommunications centre, a propaganda centre, near Mosul,” Le Drian told BFMTV, using an Arabic acronym for the IS jihadists. “We have struck seven times since Monday,” Le Drian said of the French bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria. “Daesh is pulling back in Iraq” where it has lost control of the cities of Sinjar and Ramadi, Le Drian said. IS fighters seized Raqa in Syria in early 2014 and declared it the capital of their so-called caliphate. In June the same year, the jihadists seized Mosul.