Coalition Led By The United States Has Brought ISIS To Its Knees In Syria
According to a local official, about 100 fighters from the Islamic State group known as ISIS, have surrendered since Friday in Raqqa, with the Syrian city believed to be on the brink of falling to a U.S.-led coalition there to take down the militant group.
While this was going on, a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar Province on Thursday killed 14 ISIS militants, Afghan officials said Saturday.
A spokesman for the U.S-led coalition against ISIS told Reuters on Saturday that, as it relates to Raqqa, all combatants were “removed from the city.”
ISIS was said to be on the verge of defeat in Raqqa, the report said, and now the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia is claiming that all jihadists should be gone by the end of the weekend as YPG spokesman Nouri Mahmoud told Reuters.
“Daesh (Islamic State) is on the verge of being finished. Today or tomorrow the city may be liberated.”
U.S. military spokesman Colonel Ryan Dillon told Reuters in an emailed statement that the U.S. military was more cautious about setting a timeframe.
“We still expect difficult fighting in the days ahead and will not set a time for when we think (Islamic State) will be completely defeated in Raqqa,” Dillon said.
Scores of civilians have been fleeing during the last week, with the last few remaining neighborhoods held by ISIS, ahead of an anticipated final effort by U.S.-backed fighters, seeking to reclaim the city.
’Islamic State’ facing imminent collapse in Syria’s Raqqa @dwnews https://t.co/I77vM3jXbX pic.twitter.com/gi1eTYA10N
— Mutlu Civiroglu (@mutludc) October 14, 2017
A video that emerged Friday showed desperate, terrified residents emerging from destroyed districts, some of them collapsing on the ground in exhaustion as they arrive. They appeared to be taking advantage of a lull in the fighting as well as airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition, which were taking place to help ensure the safe evacuation of an estimated 4,000 civilians who remain trapped in the city.
Powerful moments when some exhausted Raqqa civilians finally rescued from ISIS by YPG-led SDF via @nazimoo04 pic.twitter.com/IdK2ifCmWq
— Mutlu Civiroglu (@mutludc) October 14, 2017
The coalition has said that it still has reason to be concerned because they believe ISIS militants are currently holding some civilians to use as human shields, preventing them from escaping as the fight enters its final stages. The city, which is located on the banks of the Euphrates River, has been all but destroyed by the fighting, and activists have reported that over 1,000 civilians have been killed there in the last four months.
The latest battle for Raqqa began in June, with heavy street-by-street fighting amid intense U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and shelling. The battle has dragged on in the face of stiff resistance from the militants and civilians trapped in the city.
In Afghanistan, Abdul Ghani Musamim, a spokesman for the Kunar Provincial Governor, said earlier today that the drone strike which took place Thursday afternoon in the Chawkay district targeted a meeting of ISIS commanders planning for a terrorist attack.
[Featured Image by Hussein Mallah/AP Images]
