(Zaman Al Wasl)- U.S.-backed Kurdish militias seized 8 villages from the Islamic State near Markada town, the last ISIS stronghold in Hasaka province, local activists said on Sunday.
Abdulmalek al-Ali said the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had captured the town of al-Hasain in the northern countryside of Deir Ezzor and most of the villages situated on the western bank of Euphrates River near Markada.
In its turn, the extremist group said it had killed 9 SDF militants in counterattack near Al Jafra oil fields east of Deir Ezzor.
Islamic State has been in retreat for two years, losing swathes of territory in both countries and forced back into an ever-diminishing foothold along the Euphrates river valley.
Meanwhile, the U.S.-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias said they had launched their final assault on Raqqa on Sunday after a convoy of Islamic State fighters left the city, leaving only a hardcore of jihadists to mount a last stand.
“The battle will continue until the whole city is clean,” said in a statement.
The SDF said earlier that a group of the jihadists had left in a convoy taking some civilians with them. But there were conflicting accounts as to whether the evacuees included both Syrian and foreign fighters.
Raqqa’s fall to the SDF now looks imminent after four months of battle.
Raqqa was the first big Syrian city to fall to Islamic State as it declared a “caliphate” and rampaged through Syria and Iraq in 2014, becoming an operations center for attacks abroad and the stage for some of its darkest atrocities.
The SDF’s decision to hasten the battle’s end by allowing Islamic State fighters to leave Raqqa was at odds with the stated wishes of the U.S.-led coalition that backs the militias with airstrikes and special forces.
Dillon said on Sunday it was not involved in the evacuation but added: “We may not always fully agree with our partners at times. But we have to respect their solutions.”
In August, the coalition spent weeks preventing a convoy of Islamic State fighters evacuated from an enclave on the Syrian-Lebanon border from reaching jihadist territory in eastern Syria.
A Syrian military source said on Saturday the army had captured the city of al-Mayadin in the Euphrates valley, leaving Islamic State only a few more towns and villages, and areas of the surrounding desert, in Syria.
But the battle for Raqqa has come at great cost to its people. Much of the city has been pulverized by the intense coalition air strikes and by the months of street-to-street fighting. Thousands of people have fled as refugees and hundreds of civilians have died. (With Reuters)
Comments About This Article
Please fill the fields below.