Battle to retake Raqqa, IS stronghold, begins
An estimated 3,000 IS fighters believed to be in the city.
BEIRUT — U.S.-backed forces have begun the “long and difficult” battle to capture the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital, the U.S.-led coalition fighting the extremist group said Tuesday.
Kurdish-led militants began laying the groundwork for the offensive in November, edging through the surrounding province and cutting supply lines into the city. But a showdown for the city itself will prove a major test for the coalition, with the potential for high civilian casualties.
“The fight for Raqqa will be long and difficult,” Lt. Gen Steve Townsend, the coalition’s commanding general, said in a statement. In northeastern Syria, the U.S.backed Syrian Democratic Forces, a group dominated by Syrian Kurdish militants, announced that a “great battle” had begun.
Islamic State militants seized Raqqa in January 2014, transforming it into the central hub for the group’s planned expansion throughout the region and for its attacks around the world.
Three-and-a-half years later, the city has diminished in importance as the group has lost two-thirds of its self-declared caliphate across Syria and Iraq.
Western diplomats and experts monitoring the group say the Islamic State has relocated foot-soldiers and senior leaders to the eastern province of Deir al-Zour, where an even tougher fight against the militants is expected.
But U.S. officials estimate at least 3,000 Islamic State fighters are still holed up inside Raqqa, where they have erected defenses against the anticipated assault. Also in the city are as many as 200,000 civilians, who aid groups fear may be used as human shields, a tactic employed by the Islamic State in its strongholds across Syria and Iraq as coalition forces closed in.
Conditions inside the besieged city are understood to be dire. According to a recent assessment by the Syria Relief Network, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations, two-thirds of the population are living on two meals a day amid dwindling supplies of essentials.
SDF forces reached the northern and eastern gates to Raqqa last week after intense clashes under the cover of U.S.-led airstrikes.
Talal Sillo, a spokesman for the SDF, said Tuesday that the “great battle” had begun. “Morale is high and military readiness to implement the military plan is complete, in coordination with the U.S.-led coalition,” he told reporters in northeast Syria, flanked by representatives of Kurdish male and female fighting units, as well as Syrian rebel groups and Arab tribesmen.
“It’s hard to convince new recruits that ISIS is a winning cause when they just lost their twin ‘capitals’ in both Iraq and Syria,” Townsend said in the coalition statement, using an alternative acronym for the Islamic State.
Islamic State fighters are also under pressure across the border in Iraq, where U.S.-backed forces are locked in a grinding battle to retake the last neighborhoods held by the extremist group in the sprawling city of Mosul.
The group’s defeats across the two countries are believed to have strained its finances, which were heavily dependent on the ability to tax and extort populations under its control.
As Islamic State forces dig deep across their remaining territory, civilians have increasingly been caught in the crossfire, dying at the hands of the militants’ bombings and land mines as well as U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and SDF shelling.