MILITARY: “U.S.-backed forces said Tuesday [10-17-17] they have captured Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, wrenching away the terror group’s last major urban stronghold in the Middle East.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by U.S. airstrikes and American special forces on the ground, said they had completed their four-month battle for the city Islamic State used as a nerve center to plan and stage attacks on the West.
‘The military operations within the city are completely over,’ said Talal Silo, an SDF spokesman. The opposition monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said the SDF had cleared Raqqa of Islamic State fighters.
U.S. military officials stopped short of calling Raqqa liberated, saying instead it would be ‘soon.’ Army Col. Rob Manning, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that 85 percent of the city had been liberated.
Raqqa was the first major city to fall under Islamic State control and became synonymous with the group’s reign of terror across the caliphate, or religious empire. There were public beheadings for blasphemy, crucifixions for murder and child soldiers radicalized and taught to kill.
It also held some of the most important assets and institutions for the group’s state-like operations in Syria. It served as a capital where its highest courts ruled on cases appealed in other Syrian towns under Islamic State control.”
-Maria Abi-Habib and Nazih Osseiran, “U.S.-Backed Forces Say They Have Taken Raqqa, Islamic State’s Last Urban Stronghold,” The Wall Street Journal online, Oct. 17, 2017 09:35am