Battle for ISIS butcher bastion

US-backed Kurdish-Arab forces launch offensive on jihadists’ de facto Syrian capital Raqa.

A US-backed Kurdish-Arab alliance launched an offensive on Sunday on the Islamic State group’s de facto Syrian capital Raqa, upping pressure on the jihadists after Iraqi forces entered their Iraqi bastion Mosul.

“The major battle to liberate Raqa and its surroundings has begun,” Jihan Sheikh Ahmed, a spokeswoman for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said at a press conference in Ain Issa, some 50 kms north of the jihadist bastion.

The operation, dubbed “The Wrath of the Euphrates”, involves some 30,000 fighters and had begun on Saturday night, Ahmed said.

SDF spokesman Talal Sello said it would proceed in two phases, first seizing areas around Raqa and isolating the city, then “taking control of the city” itself.

“The fight will not be easy, and will require accurate and careful operations because ISIS will defend its bastion knowing that the loss of Raqa will mean it is finished in Syria,” he said.

An AFP correspondent in Ain Issa saw dozens of armed SDF fighters heading on vehicles towards the frontline. The long-awaited operation comes two years after the ISIS seized control of large parts of Syria and Iraq and declared its cross-border “caliphate”.

The jihadists have suffered a string of territorial defeats in recent months and are under pressure on multiple fronts. After launching an offensive on Mosul on October 17, Iraqi special forces pushed into the city on Friday and have been facing stiff resistance from the jihadists.The loss of Mosul and Raqa would deprive ISIS of its largest population centres, undermining the group’s claim to a self-declared “state”.

But capturing the two cities, both still home to large civilian populations, is expected to be a lengthy, and likely bloody, process.

Driving the jihadists from their urban strongholds has been the end-game since a US-led coalition launched air strikes against ISIS in the summer of 2014.

The coalition has also provided training and deployed hundreds of advisors to work with Iraqi forces and select Syrian fighters, including the SDF. Mr Sello said the alliance had received new weapons from the coalition for the Raqa battle, including anti-tank missiles.

Meanwhile, Washington has agreed that Turkey will play no role in the battle to capture the ISIS bastion Raqa, the spokesman for the Kurdish-Arab force leading the fight said on Sunday.

“We have agreed definitively with the (US-led) international coalition that there will be no role for Turkey or the armed factions allied with it in the operation,” Mr Sello said.