ISIL ‘STILL FIGHTING IN RAQQA’S OLD CITY’
▶ Monitor says victory call was premature; US says it doesn’t know
The US says the Syrian Democratic Forces are gaining more ground in Raqqa every day, but a monitor has disputed their claim to have completely recaptured the Old City from ISIL.
The SDF said on Friday that they had taken full control of the Old City and that 65 per cent of Raqqa, the self-declared capital of the extremist group, had been liberated.
But the US military, which provides extensive assistance to the SDF, could not confirm if the Old City had fallen completely.
“The SDF are making great progress around the city centre and throughout Raqqa and gain more ground every day,” said Col Ryan Dillon, the spokesman for US-led coalition fighting ISIL in Iraq and Syria.
“The SDF are the best source for operational updates on their progress in the fight to defeat ISIS in Raqqa.”
But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said yesterday that clashes continued in the Old City, centred around the Bosaria neighbourhood. It also reported fighting across the city.
Col Dillon said the US continued to monitor a convoy of buses carrying armed extremist fighters and their families that had been trying to travel to the ISIL-held city of Albu Kamal on the Iraqi-Syrian border.
The convoy of about 600 people has been stuck near the Syrian city of Al Sukhna since Wednesday after the US military carried out air strikes on roads the convoy was supposed to take after a ceasefire deal with Hizbollah.
“The convoy has not met up with ISIL elements in eastern Syria,” Col Dillon said. “We will continue to strike ISIL vehicles and fighters who attempt to unite with their fellow terrorists and will continue to disrupt the convoy from moving east.”
The transfer of the ISIL fighters and their families had been part of a deal to end the presence of the extremists on the Lebanese-Syrian border.
ISIL militants there surrendered to Hizbollah and the Syrian military late last month in exchange for the bodies of Hizbollah fighters held by ISIL.
The Observatory reported yesterday that about a dozen private cars had assisted some ISIL members in leaving the convoy and that they had pursued other routes to Deir Ezzor, including passage through Iraq.
“We have not seen that,” the
US military said. “There have been private vehicles that have arrived to the convoy to provide water and food, but we have not seen any members of the convoy who have departed with these vehicles.”
The Observatory could not confirm whether people who left the convoy were fighters or civilians.
Elsewhere in Syria, the government with support from Russian helicopters and Hizbollah fighters said it was pushing ISIL fighters from their last remaining strongholds in central Syria, near the city of Hama.
The Observatory said the government had captured the village of Uqairabat on Friday, a victory that would help to secure the country’s main highway between the cities of Homs and Aleppo, and further consolidate areas under government control.
It also catalogued 2,707 deaths in Syria last month, 790 of them civilians, and said that of those civilian deaths, 398 were caused by shelling and air strikes by the US-led coalition.
Monitoring groups have raised concerns about civilian deaths in recent months as the fight for Raqqa intensified.
The US monitoring group Airwars said last week that “1,700 or more civilians have probably been killed by US-led air and artillery strikes in Raqqa governorate since March”.
“A minimum of 860 civilians, including 150 children, are credibly reported to have been killed in Raqqa since the official start of operations to capture the city on June 6,” it said.
The Observatory puts the total number of dead in the sixyear-old conflict at more than 470,000.
But the UN’s special envoy to Syria Steffan de Mistura suggested on Friday that elections could be held in Syria within a year.
“If the international community will be helping both the opposition and the government by pushing the government to accept a real negotiation, then within a year it would be a possibility of having a truly credible election,” Mr de Mistura said.
Idlib, is “full of Al Nusra”, Mr de Mistura said of the former Al Qaeda affiliate now called Fatah Tahrir Al Sham.
Even as the government of president Bashar Al Assad makes ground with direct backing from Iran and Russia, it appears unlikely Syrians would want him to remain in power.
“We don’t accept that Al Assad could be president, even in a transitional period,” said a Syrian anti-government activist near the city of Homs who asked to remain anonymous. “There should be war crimes tribunals.”