Time to flee Raqqa, rebels tell its citizens

THE US-led coalition yesterday dropped flyers over Raqqa for the first time urging people to leave the Isilheld city, as opposition forces prepare an assault.

“The time you have been waiting for has come, the time to leave Raqqa,” the leaflet said, above a comic book-style watercolour sketch. It was posted online by the group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS).

It showed residents fleeing a grey, battered city into idyllic green countryside, past dead soldiers and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant fighters.

American planes have dropped flyers over the Syrian city several times over the past year, but these are the first to suggest an urgency in fleeing.

Hundreds of thousands of people are believed still to live under Isil’s brutal rule in the city, its de facto capital.

Propaganda distributed by its fighters has shown the beheading and execution of dissenters and defectors in its public square. Isil holds about a quarter of Syria and Iraq in its self-declared “caliphate”.

The US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) declared this week that it was only 20 miles away and closing in on the city.

The SDF, also comprising Arab, Christian and Turkmen militias, is considered one of the most effective fighting forces battling Isil. Washington sees it as the best chance for a non-sectarian Syria after the civil war.

Isil fighters, who have dug in over the past two years, have begun repositioning in anticipation of the offensive.

Abu Mohammad, of RBSS, said they were increasingly using residents as human shields against coalition air strikes.

Col Steve Warren, the spokesman for the US-led coalition, said: “Isil understands that their days are increasingly numbered.

“We are going to continue to keep this pressure on them, and we expect to see them collapse eventually.”