beirut - US-backed forces have penetrated the heavily fortified heart of militant bastion Raqqa for the first time, in a key milestone in the war against the terrorist group daesh in Syria.
Air strikes by the US-led coalition battling Daesh punched two holes in the mediaeval wall surrounding Raqqa's Old City, allowing fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces to breach the militants' defences, Washington and the SDF said on Tuesday.
The landmark advance in Daesh's notorious Syria bastion - the culmination of a nearly eight-month campaign - comes as the militants face an expected defeat within days in Iraq's second city Mosul, the other pivot of the cross-border "caliphate" they declared in 2014.
Coalition officials said a few hundred militants were making a desperate last stand in just one square kilometre of Mosul's Old City.
In neighbouring Syria, US-backed forces - including the SDF and Arab fighters from the Syrian Elite Forces - broke into Raqqa's Old City.
"There have been fierce clashes (in the Old City) since dawn today, with 200 of our fighters mobilising to the area," Syrian Elite Forces spokesman Mohammed Khaled Shaker said.
The SDF said coalition warplanes opened up two breaches in the 2.5km Rafiqah Wall around the Old City, enabling its fighters to evade explosives laid by Daesh.
"Daesh has used this archaeological wall to launch attacks, and planted bombs and mines in its gates to hinder the advance of SDF forces," the alliance said.
Under three years of militant rule, Raqqa became infamous as the scene of some of Daesh's worst atrocities, including public beheadings, and is thought to have been a hub for planning attacks overseas.
The US envoy to the coalition, Brett McGurk, said on Twitter that breaching the Rafiqah Wall marked a "key milestone in campaign to liberate the city." US Central Command, which oversees military operations across the Middle East, said the coalition air strike had allowed advancing forces "to breach the Old City at locations of their choosing." This prevented Daesh from using booby-traps, landmines and suicide car bombs, while it also "protected SDF and civilian lives, and preserved the integrity of the greatest portion of the wall," it said.
The United Nations has raised concerns for tens of thousands of civilians trapped in Raqqa, where it says the militants are using many as human shields.
The Rafiqah Wall that surrounds the city's historic heart originally dates back to the late 8th Century, when as capital of the Abbasid caliphate, Raqqa was briefly the centre of the Islamic world.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the SDF advance had been supported by US special forces and constituted the "most important progress" yet for the SDF

source: Khaleejtimes