Forces breach Daesh capital

U.S.-backed troops blasted holes in Raqqa’s Old City wall

BEIRUT— U.S.-backed fighters have breached the ancient wall of Daesh’s self-proclaimed capital, the Syrian city of Raqqa, marking new progress in the battle to rout the militants from their most important strongholds, the U.S. military said Tuesday.

Arab and Kurdish troops with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) stormed into the Old City of Raqqa overnight Monday after U.S. warplanes targeted two sections of its eighth-century wall, blasting holes that enabled fighters to funnel their way through the gaps, according to the U.S. military.

But their foothold in the neighbourhood, one of the city’s most densely populated, does not mean the four-week-old battle for control of Raqqa is nearing a conclusion, U.S. officials said.

Unlike in Mosul, Iraq, where the Old City has been the scene of Daesh’s (also known as ISIS or ISIL) last stand after nearly nine months of fighting, Raqqa’s Old City is one of the first central city neighbourhoods to be breached by the advancing forces, said Col. Ryan Dillon, the U.S. military spokesperson in Baghdad.

“Being in the Old City in Raqqa does not mean the same thing as it does in Mosul, where the Old City was the last bastion for ISIS,” Dillon said. “That is not the case in Raqqa. It’s just where the SDF forces have penetrated right now, but there is plenty of fighting that remains in Raqqa.”

The neighbourhood is also one of the areas Daesh fighters had expected to defend most fiercely, relying on the city wall to provide cover and focusing their defences around two existing breaches. Had the SDF fighters attempted to storm the area through those gaps, they would have encountered an array of heavy machine guns, artillery, snipers, mines, booby traps and car bombs, Dillon said. By blowing up two different sections of the wall, U.S. warplanes enabled them to bypass those, he said.

By averting a battle for control of the walls, the attack may also have helped preserve the historic monument, the military statement said.

Known as the Rafiqa wall, the structure is one of the last remaining monuments of the headquarters of the Abbasid caliphate, which was briefly seated in Raqqa before relocating to Baghdad.

The advances in Raqqa come as Daesh faces imminent defeat in the streets of the Old City of Mosul.