Syria defends hard-won Raqa gains from militants
raqa — Fighters from a USbacked coalition battling the Daesh group in Syria walk among heavily damaged buildings in Raqa’s Old City as wsnipers on upper floors monitor nearby militant positions.
The smell of decay rises from bodies of Daesh fighters killed in the battle for the key district as Syrian Democratic Forces field commander Ardlan Hasake patrols in an armoured Humvee.
“We pushed Daesh out of the whole of Raqa’s Old City. It was their strategic centre and their main base for foreign fighters,” he says.
“All their forces were here and they tried repeatedly to attack us in large numbers to retake it, but our comrades repelled their attacks.”
The SDF announced on Friday that it had taken full control of Raqa’s Old City after fierce clashes with the militants seeking to defend what remains of their one-time Syrian bastion.
The Kurdish-Arab alliance, backed by an international coalition fighting Daesh in Syria and neighbouring Iraq, has seized more than half of the city since they first entered it in June.
In a nearby building, commanders lounge on the floor. One holds a tablet computer which he uses to map the positions of IS fighters in a street just south of the Old City wall.
An SDF unit then moves to the front line to strike the militants.
Snipers have installed firing points in the upper floors of buildings overlooking other parts of the city.
One of them sets up a rifle he nicknames “Zagros”, after a mountain range that is home to many of the world’s Kurds.
He trains his sights on an Daesh fighter near a mobile phone tower on the edge of the Old City, and prepares to squeeze the trigger. A coalition air strike slams into a nearby street, sending clouds of grey smoke billowing into the air. —