On June 6, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the US-led coalition announced a start of the storm of the ISIS stronghold of Raqqah in northern Syria. The SDF, backed up by US-led coalition warplanes, artillery units and military advisers, attacked the city from the eastern direction and captured the Naznah area. Then, SDF fighters entered the al-Mashalab area and captured few buildings there.
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There is effectively no ISIS now in raqqah.. They have followed the orders of their masters like good dogs and noted South to deir ezzor.
Fine with me. Eufrat is a very good defense line for ISIS anymore.
That’s because ISIS doesn’t fight even remotely close to the SDF when compared to the SAA and PMU forces since the first two mentioned above are both US sponsored
Ceck your alu hat, it must have some leaks. IS isn´t fighting the kurds? Like what? Cobani? Manbji? Raqqai? Dream on…
@ Divesh Kumar
We shall soon find out. SDF is just now coming into contact with the urban area of Raqqah on the east side. I doubt that ISUS will abandon their major supply hub and good defensive terrain as some believe. Their lines of communication and mobility are shot to hell (do they need ferries to cross the river?). How much transport is on the south side of the river !?
Im like kind of that too. They has seen it comming and all is well prepared incl. soldiers for monts. There isnt much need for transportation.
So my kind of hope follows what the plan is. When important things actually are seen, most of it should be hit hard right away both ways. Before it comes under transport its hidden well.
Like how they gave baji to PMU and hundreds of villages in few days.
Well probatly again. Your “No trace of ISIS” is far out. Same somg from You. They take only dersert, hamlets vilages – hard figtings are ignores, because they dont put it up at some lowlife Assads are meeting some good from ISIS being hundreds od´r tens and not “t h o u s e n d s”.
You ignore casualties from SDF. When weapons are taken in small bunches its hahahaah. If You see hundreds of mortergrenateds – its ignored in comments.
Now they are blamed have made a corridor for ISIS out. But it started with 360 degreees were free and now its less then 180. Its well known that blocking a town make defenders more desperate and make bigger loses for the civilians, but some demand that. In the other hand USA(which actuely are with many orther nations) are blamed for killing too many civilians.
SDF is slow, make slow advances – but in the same time has taken to much land back from ISIS. Assads and FSA hasnt. And a few hours again: Kurds will take all they want and make themselves a state based on oil. Well the fact is – like in Iraq – that the poor ones hasnt got much oil money, but Damaskusses as well as bagdads has done its worst to take all. So thats upside down – too.
So many blame kurds – now being in same defence with others and rising and all is done to make them delayed and infected eevemn having Turks bombarding and invading. Kurds wasnt even in the uprise and are not but kind of neutral.
In the most infantile way its as usual. All was fine if Kurds, Jews and USA wasnt there. You even go back 1800 years in lousy ecomy and resistance against Islam. At that time there was many jews and christians where Islam was introduced and majority. The rest was probatly kind of Baal or kind of Shamans. So it was a majority, which defended themselves against the new invension.
You even deny kurds has been there before most others and certainly before any Turks even its proved by old history in writing, arhealogy says at least 4.000 years and DNA/Haplo confirm the mix up of today.
Have a feeling this will be relatively quick
mosul building area Length is Almost 16 Km 3.2 under isis control
but all Raqqa Length is 5 Km
Two-three months.
Daesh and “SDF” same shit: zionist proxies.
Have you already read that hundred of planes, submarines, aircraft carrier are joint to attack Raqqah ?…a place where there are almost non ISIS fighters ! WOW !, but those ISIS fighters you can find them now in Deir EZZor for sure, or close to Palmyra. I just wonder, how those ISIS manged in order to not be seen by Russia ? For me, it is hard to believe that Russia did not see them traveling away from Raqqah.
They did not travel by road – the few convoys that got bombed were just probing attempts to see how tight the Russian surveillance really was. They were probably told (lied to) that there were big gaps in the surveillance. Those who got out travelled by air, more specifically in a US helicopter.
They tried a similar tabqa airborne landing in Southern Raqqa didn’t work out so much for all clueless people say they are leaving ISIS escape route open.
Raqqah is not a Kurdish city and naturally the Kurds are reluctant to storm it. Taking a city by storm against a determined defence is very costly. Why should the Kurds bleed for a city that is not theirs, and won’t be afterwards either?
There are two ways the US/Kurdish union can take the city. Firstly they can level the city with extensive bombing campaign. This would be costly and very unpopular in the west. Neither the Kurds or Us can lay claim to the city (except by conquest only), and if they did after the bombing campaign it would be a dystopian desert. The other way is by getting the defenders to leave. After that you just walk in, against maybe a token defence (who have been told that they will be captured and released as long as they pretend to fight, but of course they will be shot and photographed to prove that the Kurds had to fight for it) mainly to get some fake battle footage. I tend to think the second option is happening in Raqqah. ISUS defends even bits of desert against SAA, so how come the Kurds just “capture” a few buildings when they enter the city. A sham war in Al-Sham!
dont worry the city is eampty..they have an agreement with ISIS.they have an easy way out from the south…..
Raqqah will be a walk in the park for the Kurds.its eampty….maybe some idiots will be left behind to fire a couple of shots….the Kurds will fight bravely with massive artilery strikes…maybe a couple of US planes will bomb the desert (like they do for 3 years now)…all of it…an eyes pleasure for the media to cover……