US-backed force has seized a quarter of Raqqa from Daesh: Monitor

BEIRUT: US-backed fighters have seized a quarter of Syria’s Raqqa from Daesh, a monitor said Monday, less than three weeks after they first entered the northern city.

Arab and Kurdish militiamen from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) smashed into the militants’ main Syrian bastion on June 6 after a months-long drive to encircle it.

“Since the offensive began, the SDF have captured around 25 percent of the city’s built-up neighborhoods,” Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP on Monday.

Backed by US-led coalition airstrikes, the SDF has fully seized the southeastern districts of Al-Meshleb and Al-Senaa, as well as Al-Rumaniya and Sabahiya in the west, he said.

From those neighborhoods, they were bearing down on Raqqa’s Old City in a pincer movement on Monday, with fighting raging in the western Al-Qadisiya district and parts of the city’s east.

SDF fighters also hold part of Division 17 — a former Syrian army base — and an adjacent sugar factory on the northern edges of the city.

“They want to cut off the city’s northern part, including the Division 17 base, so that there’s more pressure on (Daesh) in the city center,” Abdel Rahman said.

The battle for Raqqa is the SDF’s flagship offensive, with heavy backing from coalition airstrikes, advisers, weapons and equipment.

The coalition is also making a major assault on the last Daeshheld pockets of Mosul in neighboring Iraq.

Daesh overran Raqqa in 2014, transforming it into the de facto Syrian capital of its self-declared authority.

Daesh prisoners, who were pardoned by a council that is expected to govern Raqqa once the group is dislodged from the Syrian city, stand in Ain Issa village, north of the city, on Saturday. (Reuters)