Islamic State militants are barricading down for a possible assault on their de facto capital Raqqa, hiding among civilian homes and preventing anyone from fleeing, as worldwide airstrikes intensify on the Syrian city in the wake of the Paris attacks. President Vladimir Putin vowed to hunt down those responsible and intensify air strikes against Islamists in Syria. Over the past year, though, government bombardments of the city have become more frequent, sometimes hitting schools and other civilian infrastructure, residents say.
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“In accordance to the task assigned by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armed Forces concerning enhancing combat air operations in the Syrian Arab Republic, crews of Tu-160, Tu-95MS and Tu-22M3 long-range aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces carried out strikes with air-based cruise missiles at the ISIS terrorist objects within the air operation”, the Russian defense ministry said in a statement.
Iraqi intelligence told The Associated Press the operation was planned in Raqqa, where attackers were trained with the intention of going to France. As Reuters reports, ISIS said the attacks on Paris and Russia was in retaliation to French and Russian air raids in Iraq and Syria.
IS has cracked down on activists and is controlling access to the internet. More French airstrikes, reaching 25 to 30, struck Raqqa late Tuesday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group in Britain that has a network of contacts in Syria.
Khaled, who now lives in Turkey, is in touch with Raqqa residents. The activists said that despite the fear, some residents enjoyed a few moments of freedom when fighters took cover during airstrikes, especially women who step out on their balconies without worrying that the fighters will order them to cover up.
“They were doing a demonstration”, Pifer said of the Russian airstrikes, noting the use of its air-launched and sea-launched capabilities was more of a display and not strategic.
In a speech on Monday, Mr Hollande reiterated that Mr Assad could not be part of any political solution to the conflict in Syria, but also said that “our enemy in Syria is Daesh”, using a term for IS based on an acronym of its former name in Arabic.
Among new measures that have been put in place by IS, according to several activists: It has ordered its fighters to move only in alleys and side streets to avoid detection from the air and not to use vehicles at night.
France retaliated by striking a command center and a recruitment center in Raqqa.
The efforts of French President Francois Hollande to bring together a France-U.S.-Russia coalition against the jihadists, can not succeed unless either the US drops its demand for Assad to be removed from power, or Russian Federation drops its insistence upon killing not only the jihadist groups that the USA opposes, but the jihadist groups that the USA supports in Syria. More recently, the militants placed tires filled with fuel on empty barrels around the city, with plans to ignite them in case of an attack to cloud the skies with smoke.
On Wednesday November 18th, a Defense Department spokesman at a Pentagon press briefing was repeatedly asked by reporters whether there is any possibility of the USA working with Russian Federation to defeat jihadists in Syria.
“They must support the [rebel] Free Syrian Army to attack Raqqa and seize it from IS”.
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Russian Federation began air strikes in Syria at the end of September.
