He said the US got a “military notification” that Russian Federation was attacking Raqqa, but said that’s not the same thing as coordination. For many, the threat of missiles and bombs from the enemies of Islamic State is more of an immediate threat than the vicious oppression of the jihadis’ themselves. President Vladimir Putin vowed to hunt down those responsible and intensify air strikes against Islamists in Syria. Islamic State fighters are hiding in civilian neighborhoods and preventing anyone from fleeing, former residents say.
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The northern Syrian city’s estimated 350,000 people are gripped by fear, rattled by powerful Russian and French airstrikes that shake the city daily. No civilians were killed or injured in Tuesday’s attacks, they said.
Citing activists, the Observatory also said that Islamic State members and dozens of the families of senior members had started leaving Raqqa city to relocate to Mosul in Iraq because of security concerns.
But impoverished civilians run much of the group’s oil operations, including oil tanker trucks, said Hassan Hassan, who co-wrote the book “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror” and is an analyst at Chatham House, a London-based think tank. Despite his allegiance to the Syrian government, Shadi said that as a practical matter government airstrikes tended to hit less precisely, whereas American ones had sometimes been accurate enough to kill Islamic State commanders in their cars.
However, debkafile reports that the new, stepped up Russian aerial offensive is fact bringing forward certain – not necessarily jihadist – Syrian rebel groups as Moscow’s priority targets, with ISIS only in second place. Russian Federation insists that there is little distinction between the Islamic State and other insurgent groups, like the Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front and a few U.S.-backed factions. Russian Federation planned 127 sorties on 206 targets in the first 24 hours of the new campaign, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said. The United States insists that the focus should be on the Islamic State, and that a few other groups are legitimate opposition forces. British war planes have been bombing the militants in Iraq, but not Syria.
The activist, AbdAlaziz Alhamza, a nom de guerre, said France and the rest of the coalition appear to be aware of how the militant group uses human shields to protect its fighters and operations centers in the city, including a command-like facility with an underground prison, he said.
“They are coming under increasing economic pressure, and passing this down on the population”, Strack said.
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Specifically, Hollande knows that for his proposed coalition to bear fruit, he needs to convince two of the most active players in Syria – the United States and Russian Federation – to put aside their strategic differences and increase their practical cooperation. Activists reported 15 explosions overnight on Tuesday, though they said the city was also struck by an unidentified ballistic missile.
