On September 5, US President Barack Obama vows to build an global coalition to defeat IS.
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With the help of U.S. airpower, it has taken control of some 26,000 sq/km of territory, including a 400 km stretch along the Turkish border.
An Iraqi military official also says the eastern province of Diyala has been liberated. Raqqa is located on the north bank of the Euphrates River, some 100 miles east of Aleppo. Government forces and Shiite militias had launched their offensive on March 2 against the IS, which controlled Tikrit for almost 10 months.
But in May, the IS takes Iraqi provincial capital Ramadi, and Syria’s famed ancient city of Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Beirut- Fearing ISIS breaking through and taking over the two towns of Mare and Azaz, located near Turkish borders, the Syrian Opposition reported hundreds of civilians fleeing the area and leaving for Afrin which is predominated by Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).
There are an estimated 300,000 people still living in Raqa city, the de facto Syrian capital of IS’s so-called “caliphate”.
Turkish raids are nonetheless mostly aimed at positions of the Kurdistan Workers Party in Iraq and Syria.
The offensives came as Washington and Moscow scrambled to salvage a shaky ceasefire between the regime and non-jihadist rebels meant to pave the way for peace talks to end Syria’s five-year conflict. The group is also being targeted in a separate campaign by the Syrian military and its allies, including Russian Federation.
The US envoy for Syria late Monday urged rebels to respect the February 27 ceasefire after they gave its brokers – Washington and Moscow – until Tuesday afternoon to stop an advance on rebel bastions outside Damascus.
The SDF primarily consists of fighters from the YPG – armed wing of the PYD – but also includes a host of Arab, Christian and other fighters. That means that the US troops are often in a supporting role, providing fire support and coordinating airstrikes from behind the front lines, although in a complex fight such as the ones in Iraq and Syria, that line is often blurred.
Iraqi forces retake Ramadi on December 27.
Elsewhere in Syria, a government offensive targeting rebel-held areas outside the capital Damascus dealt a further blow to worldwide efforts to enforce a viable ceasefire that would allow peace talks aimed at ending the five-year war to resume.
On May 24, Kurdish and Arab units grouped within the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launch an assault backed by US-led air support against IS fighters north of Raqa, but makes no mention of the city itself. Russia, which appears to have suffered an IS attack on one of its air bases in Syria, says it is ready to coordinate actions with both the United States and SDF.
“Any ground battle to liberate Falluja is likely to be long and bloody”.
IS showed it could still strike back, with a wave of attacks killing more than 160 people a day earlier in Syrian regime coastal strongholds.
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“We recognise that the CoH (Cessation of Hostilities) is under severe stress, but believe that to abandon it now would be strategic error”, Michael Ratney said in a statement on Twitter.
