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Kurdish-led forces take aim on ISIS in Raqqa
BEIRUT — A Kurdishled Syrian force backed by the U.S. expects to advance on the Islamic State group’s de facto capital of Raqqa in northern Syria this summer, a commander said Friday, following a decision by the Trump administration to supply the force with heavier weapons.
The Syrian Democratic Forces have been buoyed by this week’s capture of the key town of Tabqa and its nearby dam.
The advance left no significant militant-held urban settlements between SDF lines and Raqqa, about 25 miles to the east.
An SDF commander, identified only as Abdelqader, said the battle for Raqqa would begin when the group receives the weapons from the U.S. military, adding he expects the fighters to storm the city in the coming weeks against the Islamic State, also called ISIS.
The announcement to equip the SDF with weapons was a snub to Turkey, which doesn’t want the Syrian Kurdish-led force to take Raqqa and has offered its own troops instead.
Ankara is also enraged by U.S. plans to arm the Syrian Kurds, who they consider terrorists.
But the SDF made clear it is capable enough with the forces and support it already has.
“We do not want any other forces to participate with us,” Abdelqader said.
The SDF also announced it would hand over the town to civilian administrators.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised to persuade President Donald Trump to reverse his administration’s decision in a meeting between the two leaders next week at the White House.
A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, said that although the U.S. has no indication of structural problems with the Tabqa dam, it is sending a “dam assessment team” to assess its condition “and ensure it continues operating.”
Davis said about 70 ISIS fighters “conceded to SDF terms, which included dismantling improvised explosive devices around the dam, surrendering all of its heavy weapons and forcing the withdrawal of all remaining fighters from Tabqa,” he said, “The SDF accepted (ISIS’) surrender of the city to protect innocent civilians and to protect the Tabqa dam infrastructure.”
He said the U.S.-led coalition “tracked fleeing fighters and targeted those that could be safely hit without harming civilians.”
Regarding the U.S. decision to arm Kurdish elements of the SDF, Davis said the arming has not yet begun. He also said that when it starts, it will not be publicly acknowledged by the U.S.
More than 1,200 residents and opposition fighters trapped in the Syrian capital Damascus left their neighborhoods for rebelheld Idlib province Friday as part of a deal to return the last neighborhoods of the capital to government control.
Syrian state media said 718 fighters and 528 others were transported out of the Barzeh and Tishreen neighborhoods in the second round of departures from the area since it came under government siege last month.
Tens of thousands of people living in besieged areas around Damascus, Homs and Aleppo — Syria’s largest city — have surrendered under similar agreements in recent months, agreeing to relocate in what critics have said amounts to forced displacement.
The evacuations are taking place at the same time as U.N.-mediated talks between the government and the opposition, though the U.N. does not endorse the population transfers. Delegates are set to meet again in Geneva next week.
President Bashar Assad indicated in an interview on Belarus ONT television aired Thursday that the government would not take the summit seriously.
He said the talks are “merely a meeting for the media” and “there is nothing substantial in all the Geneva meetings. Not even one per million. It is null.”
Syria’s state-run news agency, SANA, reported Friday that three journalists were wounded while covering a government offensive against the Islamic State group in the central province of Homs.