"Coalition warplanes struck the airport’s control towers, which ISIL snipers had used to fire on Iraqi military personnel," Army Colonel Ezzedine al-Andalusi said.

"Thursday’s airstrikes succeeded in neutralizing all militants deployed near the targets," he said, without providing an exact number.

"Such strikes have played a significant role in degrading the extremist group’s military capacity," al-Andalusi added.

In a related development, Qasim al-Rubaie, an army officer, said that Iraqi forces were still in the process of securing recently captured areas of eastern Mosul, where they had unearthed a large weapons cache containing sophisticated missiles. 

"The militants defaced the manufacturer’s labels so the origins of the missiles could not be identified," al-Rubaie said.

Earlier this week, the Iraqi army announced the "total liberation" of eastern Mosul -- after three months of fighting -- from the grip of the extremist group. 

Last October, the Iraqi army -- backed by a U.S.-led air coalition and local allies on the ground -- began a wide-ranging campaign to retake Mosul, which ISIL overran in mid-2014. 

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