Baghdad, Jan 6 (IANS): Iraqi leaders Tuesday said the process of rebuilding the country's army is in its first stage and pledged to continue the exercise and reforms in the military structure following the blitzkrieg of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group which seized large parts of the country.

"One of the essential issues that we focused on was the reform of the military institutions, which will restore the reverence of the soldier and the army. There is no place for corruption in the military institution," Xinhua quoted Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi as saying at the graduation ceremony of army officers at the Iraqi Military Academy on the 94th anniversary of Army Day Tuesday.

Corruption was seen as one of the main reasons behind the collapse of the Iraqi security forces which failed to stop the advance of the armed Sunni insurgents spearheaded by the IS militant group.

Apparently, many units of the security forces were short of weapons and ammunition and had a large number of ghost soldiers who were just listed on paper, but were not present in battles.

Late in November, Abadi revealed that he had discovered more than 50,000 ghost soldiers in four army divisions, who stayed at home and paid half their salary to some corrupt officers.

In a televised address on the anniversary of Army Day, the country's Minister of Defence Khalid al-Obiedi gave an assessment of the situation of the Iraqi army and the reasons behind the collapse of the armed forces during the advance of the IS militants in June.

"The poor performance, lean administration, incompetent elements in the chain of command, lack of discipline, poor training and mismanagement, in addition to lack of confidence between the people and the security forces in general, were real reasons for the setback," Obiedi said, adding that corruption eroded the military body.

The new leadership of Iraq has kicked off the process of rebuilding the military organisations by changing some military leaders, Obiedi said, adding "this was the first step which will be followed by other steps down to the lowest hierarchical structure of the army".

The security situation in Iraq begun to drastically deteriorate since June 10, when bloody clashes broke out between the Iraqi security forces and the IS group, which took control of the country's northern province of Nineveh and later seized swathes of territory after Iraqi security forces abandoned their posts in other Sunni provinces.