US threatens Iran after fall of ISIS “capital” of Raqqa
By
James Cogan
23 October 2017
US-backed forces announced on October 16 they had fully captured Raqqa, the Syrian city on the Euphrates River that the fundamentalist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had styled the “capital” of its “caliphate.”
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), largely comprised of Kurdish nationalist militias, laid siege to Raqqa in June. For four-and-a-half months, ISIS fighters and tens of thousands of civilians in the city were subjected to relentless, daily air strikes by American, French and British fighter-bombers. Hundreds of American special forces personnel served as “advisors” and spotters. A US marine unit provided ground artillery support.
By all accounts, Raqqa has been destroyed, with at least 80 percent of all buildings uninhabitable and the remainder severely damaged. Major General Igor Konashenkov, the main spokesperson for the Russian Defence Ministry, told journalists: “Raqqa has inherited the fate of [the German city] Dresden in 1945, wiped off the face of the Earth by Anglo-American bombardments.”
Of the city’s pre-ISIS takeover population of more than 200,000, barely 45,000 remain. The rest are dead or scattered in refugee camps.
The exact casualties may never be known. The monitoring organisation Airwars claims to have verifiable reports that airstrikes killed at least 1,300 civilians. It notes allegations that the figure is as high as 3,200. During the final stages of the offensive and the intense bombardment, hundreds more may have been killed and left buried under tonnes of rubble.
The number of ISIS fighters killed is also unknown. It certainly runs into the thousands. As during the US-backed assault on ISIS in the Iraqi city of Mosul, no…