For months, the anti-IS forces have been advancing gradually toward Raqqa with backing from American-led airstrikes, capturing IS-held towns to the north and east of the city.
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The al-Qaida breakaway group is coming under increased military pressure after claiming responsibility for Friday’s attacks in Paris, which killed 129 people.
Speaking to the Associated Press, an unnamed USA defence official said the Russian military had communicated prior to the attacks with the US-led coalition’s centre of operations at the al-Udeid air base in Qatar.
This is an excerpt from an Islamic State propaganda video in which militants threaten a Paris-style attack on the US capital.
A manhunt was continuing in France and Belgium on Tuesday for one of the eight attackers in the Paris assault.
But the extremists are digging in to make any potential assault as grueling as possible.
“There were networks of folks in Raqqa endeavoring to conduct similar attacks in the U.S. We killed majority”, the official said. Islamic State is “barring Syrian civilians from fleeing the city because it wants to keep up the impression it’s still strong and to use them as human shields”, he said.
The activist declined to be identified for security reasons.
Khaled, who now lives in Turkey, is in touch with people back in Raqqa. Islamic State fighters over the past several months have been closing Internet cafes and monitoring the remaining ones more closely, making it hard for residents to reach the outside world and to speak freely when they do.
Kerry told reporters afterwards that Islamic State was losing territory in Syria and Iraq, while the Western-backed coalition was gaining ground.
On the roads leading into Raqqa, the extremists have dug extensive tunnels and trenches, said another activist from Raqqa, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of IS retaliation. Chief among them: Why, if there were confirmed Islamic State targets that could be hit without killing civilians, were they not hit more heavily long ago? “The people feel that they are in a large prison and that at any moment there could be a battle for Raqqa or preparatory air strikes where they will be the biggest losers”, said Tim Ramadan, an activist with Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a campaign group that opposes both Islamic State and the Syrian regime.
– November 16-17: French jets bombed a jihadi training camp and munitions dump in Raqqa.
President Vladimir Putin told Russian state media said he had “even showed our (G20) colleagues our images taken from space and planes which clearly show the scope that illegal trade in oil and oil products acquires: convoys of fuel transporters stretching by dozens of kilometers”.
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A second United States official, again speaking on condition of anonymity, later told AFP that Russian Federation had sent one “strike package” of long-range bombers and had also fired “about 20” cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea, all of which appeared to have landed in Syria.
