U.S.-backed troops fight for full control of Raqqa
BEIRUT — A U.S.-backed Kurdish-led force battling the Islamic State group in Syria will be in control of Raqqa “within a few days” after attacking the last militant-held pocket of the city, a spokesman for the force said Monday.
Mustafa Bali of the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, also said that fierce street battles were under way near the main hospital in Raqqa, once the de facto capital of the extremists’ self-proclaimed caliphate.
A Kurdish SDF commander said fighting ebbs and flows in order to allow the remaining civilians to leave the area. The U.S.-led coalition said there were no air strikes in or around Raqqa for 24 hours starting noon Sunday.
SDF fighters launched an operation to retake the last Islamic State-held pocket of the city after some 275 militants and their family members surrendered over the weekend. The extremists still hold about 10 percent of Raqqa, including the hospital and the main stadium, which is believed to be used by the militants as a jail and an arms depot.
Activists said those who surrendered were taken to an SDF-run prison in the nearby town of Tabqa, where they are being interrogated before facing trial. Most of the remaining militants in the city are believed to be foreigners.
“We believe that it will be all over within a few days,” Bali said. “Those (Islamic State) fighters who are still inside will fight to the death.”
A senior Kurdish commander with SDF in Raqqa said that from Sunday night until the early hours Monday scores of civilians trickled out of the militant-held part of the city. The commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said more than 400 civilians have reached SDF fighters.
The commander added that the SDF was searching for wanted foreign fighters sought by European and other countries. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had previously reported that among the fighters remaining in Raqqa is a militant who planned attacks in France that killed and wounded dozens of people, saying he was a French or Belgian citizen of North African origin.
Meanwhile, Syrian government forces and their allies began a major offensive on Islamic State-held neighborhoods in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour, according to state TV and the Observatory.
The Observatory said government forces are pushing through two neighborhoods under the cover of air strikes by Russian warplanes.
The move by government forces comes just two days after Syrian President Bashar Assad’s troops captured the IS stronghold of Mayadeen, south of Deir el-Zour, in another blow to the extremists in eastern Syria.
The loss of Raqqa and Deir el-Zour would hand yet another major blow to IS, which has lost most of the territory it once held in Syria and Iraq. Iraqi forces captured the northern Iraqi city of Mosul — the largest ever held by IS — in July, and Syria’s Mayadeen, near the border with Iraq, was retaken by government forces on Saturday.