On Saturday, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) captured the village of Mustajid Naqib and fully encircled the ISIS-held city of Raqqah. As a result of this development, ISIS units inside Raqqah lost an opportunity to leave the besieged city.
Click to see the full-sizie map
How can it be fully encircled when a river cuts across it? They’ll just jump in thier submarine’s or?? :-)
ISIL home made nazi U-boat… https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NzXk9KQHS40/maxresdefault.jpg They also can escape with their Shuttle from their Islamic Space Program.
Erdogan knows a lot about the latter…
Daesh will miraculously “slip through” the siege on their way to Deir Ezzor. 3,500 battle-hardened and fanatical terrorists are too good an asset for the CIA to waste.
SDF continues doing well around Raqqah. They will expand, imo, somewhat more south of the river but will off course concentrate in the north.
Slowly they are advancing on the center, already reached in the east. An all out assault of the center is unlikely until first there are more liberated areas around the center and secondly more civilians out of the city.
they game the opportunity to ISIS to escape….now only a small portion remains. all major players left a long time ago
now they encircle the city?now?isis had all the time to move out of the city and back in again about 11111 times. its obvious the sdf doesnt want to fight any more. they have all the land they want. Raqqah is not their coty. The americans wanted them to ‘liberate’ Raqqah just for public relations reasons. Now that they see that the SAA is near the city they encircle so as not to risk any SAA soldiers in Raqqah
Yes but in fairness, if they’d use up 1000+ fighters for what is not THEIR city they’d also be criticized for being mindless stooges. They’re gaming the system to prove themselves useful to Uncle Sam just enough to get weapons, but not so much as to become a nation of martyrs. It’s the Middle East after all. Were one favorably disposed to them, one might call it “rational”.
i agree you are very right indeed.
Encircling Raqqah doesn’t mean it’s sealed. I expect it will be back door open policy as usual.