SDF Militants in Final Push Against Daesh in Raqqah

Date: 16 October 2017 - 20:13

News ID: ۴۵۳۴۱

RAQQAH, Syria (Dispatches) – U.S.-backed militants battled foreign terrorists defending the last pocket of Daesh’s one-time Syrian capital of Raqqah on Monday, bringing their four-month campaign for the city to the brink of victory.
A Reuters correspondent saw smoke rising above the city and heard machinegun and mortar fire.
A field commander of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance of Kurdish and Arab militants in Raqqah said he expected the operation to end on Monday. The U.S.-led coalition supporting them said it could not put a timeline on the battle.
A convoy of Syrian Daesh terrorists left Raqqah on Saturday night with their families, leaving only 200-300 foreign terrorists to mount a last stand, according to the SDF.
The SDF is now poised to end Daesh’s rule over a city where it launched a string of lightning victories in 2014 and plotted attacks on civilian targets across the West.
Its defeat in Raqqah mirrors its collapse across Iraq and Syria, where its enemies have driven it from cities, killed its leaders in air strikes and regained the oil fields that funded its self-declared caliphate.
Daesh lost Mosul in Iraq, its largest city and most prized possession, after months of fighting in July.
The group, which at its height ruled millions of people in both countries, is now forced back in Syria into a strip of the Euphrates valley south of Dayr al-Zawr and desert on each side.
"We have conducted some (air) strikes in the last 24 hours, but I suspect that that will pick up here very soon with the SDF advancing into the final remaining areas of the city,” said coalition spokesman Colonel Ryan Dillon.
The coalition has supported the SDF with air power and special forces throughout its Raqqah campaign, which began in November with an offensive to isolate the city.