Iraqi security forces with an ISIS flag pulled down in the town of Hit, April 2

BAGHDAD — Iraq said on Wednesday its U.S.-backed military campaign against ISIS had retaken around two-thirds of the territory seized by the militants in their lightning sweep across the country’s north and west in 2014.

“Daesh’s presence in Iraqi cities and provinces has declined. After occupying 40 percent of Iraqi territory, now only 14 percent remains,” government spokesman Saad al-Hadithi said in a televised statement.

That calculation appeared rosier than recent estimates from Washington. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told Alhurra TV late last month that ISIS had lost 44 percent of the territory it had held in Iraq.

Iraq’s military, along with Kurdish peshmerga forces, Shi’a militias and Sunni tribal fighters, have recaptured several cities in the past year, including Ramadi, Tikrit and Baiji.

Yet ISIS still manages to launch deadly attacks in areas under the government’s nominal control. On Wednesday, a suicide car bomb in Baghdad’s Sadr City district killed at least 52 people and wounded more than 78.

Iraqi officials say they will retake the northern city of Mosul this year, but in private many question whether that is possible.