U.S.-backed forces enter Raqqa’s Old City

The advance marked new progress in the battle to rout the Islamic State group from its most important strongholds.

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

Arab and Kurdish troops with the Syrian Democratic Forces stormed into the Old City of Raqqa overnight Monday after U.S. warplanes targeted two sections of its 8th-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 neighborhood, one of the city’s most densely popu- lated, does not mean the four-week-old battle for con- trol of Raqqa is nearing a con- clusion, U.S. officials said.

Unlike in Mosul, Iraq, where the Old City is the scene of the Islamic State’s last stand after nearly nine months of fighting, Raqqa’s

Old City is one of the first central city neighborhoods to be breached by the advancing forces, said Col. Ryan Dillon, the U.S. military spokesman 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, using an acronym for the Islamic State. “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 neighborhood is also one of the areas Islamic State fighters had expected to defend most fiercely, rely- ing on the city wall to provide cover and focusing their defenses 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 con- trol of the walls, the attack

FURAT FM / VIA AP Smoke rises from the Old City in Raqqa, Syria, on Tuesday following heavy bombing. Syrian Democratic Forces fighters, with the aid of U.S. warplanes, breached the ancient wall around the historic neighborhood as they continued to drive out Islamic...