Final Raqa battle in a few days, says France

beirut — The international coalition battling the Daesh group will begin a final push on the militants’ Syrian stronghold Raqa in the coming days, French Defence Minister Jean Yves Le Drian said Friday.

But on the ground, the USbacked Kurdish-Arab alliance spearheading the battle for the militant group’s de facto Syrian capital faces several key obstacles before reaching Raqa.

“Today, we can say that Raqa is surrounded and the battle will begin in the coming days,” Le Drian told France’s CNEWS television. “This will be a very hard battle but essential.”

France, which has been targeted by a wave of militant attacks, is one of the most active members of the US-led coalition against Daesh. It ratcheted up its air strikes against the extremists after the Paris massacre of November 2015 which was claimed by Daesh.

The militants are under attack from several directions in northern Syria, with Russia supporting its Syrian ally President Bashar Al Assad on one front and Turkey providing air cover for rebel groups battling the militants on another.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a KurdishArab alliance, has been working for months to encircle Raqa.

The US military has provided air and artillery support involving Apache helicopter gunships to help the SDF in an offensive for the strategically important Tabqa Dam near Raqa.

A US spokesman said last week that seizing the dam would “give the SDF a strategic advantage and launching point needed for the liberation” of Raqa. “The first goal of the SDF is to control Tabqa city (next to the dam) or besiege it completely before starting the battle for Raqa,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor. —