US-backed Syria force advances in south of ISIS bastion Raqqa

US-backed forces battling to oust ISIS from its Syrian bastion Raqqa have advanced in the city’s south, seizing a new neighborhood, a spokesman and monitor said Tuesday.

The Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces militia (SDF) began a campaign to capture Raqqa from ISIS last year, slowly encircling the city before breaking into it for the first time in June.

Backed by US-led coalition air strikes, the alliance now controls more than 50 percent of the city, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor.

“Overnight, the SDF advanced in the south of the city, after taking control of the Nazlet Shahada neighborhood,” said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

He said SDF fighters also controlled large parts of the adjacent neighborhood of Hisham Bin Abdel Malik, after advancing in the south from both the eastern and western fronts.

“Daesh (ISIS) effectively no longer has a presence in the southern neighborhoods of Raqqa, after SDF forces coming from the eastern front met with those advancing from the western front,” he added.

Smoke billows out from Raqqa following a coalition air strike on July 28, 2017. (AFP)

Nuri Mahmud, a spokesman for the Kurdish YPG militia that dominates the SDF, confirmed to AFP that the SDF was advancing in the south.“Daesh has been almost completely eliminated from the Nazlet Shahada and Hisham Bin Abdel Malik neighborhoods,” he added.

Writing on Twitter, the US envoy to the international coalition against IS praised the SDF’s advances. “Significant progress in Raqa last 24 hours, with key territory seized by SDF forces & 100s of civilians freed,” Brett McGurk wrote.

Abdel Rahman said the fighting was now centred around the area south of the city centre and on the outskirts of the district of Hisham Bin Abdel Malik.

“The SDF is a few hundred metres (yards) from Daesh’s main headquarters in Clock Square, which is where Daesh carried out executions,” he said. He added that SDF fighters were also on the outskirts of Al-Thakana neighborhood, one of the city’s most densely-populated.