Mustafa Bali, who heads the SDF media center, confirmed Thursday that the group now has half of Raqqa and said the most important areas liberated in the past four days were the Nazlet Shehadeh and Panorama Square neighborhoods — both on the southwestern part of the city. But he said there are ISIS counterattacks, ISIS sleeper cells and tunnels in the area.
"It was not easy, we have casualties and martyrs," he said, adding that the fighting was ongoing.
In the eastern front, where SDF forces breached ISIS defenses on the edge of the old city about a month ago, fighters have now reached the old citadel, an SDF commander in charge of one sector in the front told AP.
"As we move forward we find a tunnel every 100 meters," Jihad Khabat said. He said the enemy, "besieged and in distress," hides in deep and long tunnels spread all under the city, from where they would appear and harass Syrian fighters with frequent daily counterattacks.
The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said SDF fighters control half of Raqqa.
The attacks on the city have claimed many civilian casualties among the tens of thousands who are still trapped in areas controlled by ISIS.
The Observatory said 29 people, including eight children, were killed in airstrikes on the city on Wednesday. The activist-operated Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently group said 36 people were killed and more than 50 wounded in airstrikes and shelling of Raqqa.
The reports could not be independently confirmed.
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27 July 2017 - 14:37
News ID: 844521
(AhlulBayt News Agency) - The so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed group of mostly Kurdish forces has captured almost half of Raqqa from the ISIS, but the push into the northern city has slowed due to large amounts of explosives planted by the extremists and their counteroffensives, a spokeswoman for the fighters and a monitoring group said Thursday.
