US-backed force enters Raqa from south

BEIRUT: US-backed fighters pierced jihadist-held Raqa from the south for the first time on Sunday, crossing the Euphrates River to enter a new part of the Syrian city, a monitor said.

The Syrian Democratic Forces have spent months closing in on the Islamic State group’s bastion Raqa and entered the city’s east and west for the first time last month.

On Thursday, the US-backed Arab-Kurd alliance sealed off the jihadists’ last escape route by capturing territory on the southern bank of the Euphrates.

“Today, they entered Raqa’s south for the first time and seized the Al-Hal market,” Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said on Sunday.

He said some SDF fighters had advanced north across the Euphrates River, while others had attacked Al-Hal from the adjacent district of Al-Meshleb in Raqa’s east.

“The market is fully under SDF control but IS is waging a counterattack,” Abdel Rahman said.

The SDF’s Operation Wrath of the Euphrates announced it had captured the Al-Hal market on Sunday.

Abdel Rahman also said 11 civilians, including four women and five children, were killed in coalition air strikes on the western Raqa district of Al-Daraiya.

The new deaths put at more than 200 the civilian toll from coalition raids on Raqa since the US-backed SDF entered the city on June 6.

The Observatory said “dozens” of SDF fighters had been killed in Raqa in the same period, “including 36 in the past week”. — AFP