TIME November 6, 2017
years of fighting, Islamic State militants
fell back to their main prizes. In Iraq, they
fought for Mosul, the largest city they had
captured. In Syria, they fought for Raqqa,
their de facto capital. Mosul fell in July
after nearly nine months of fighting by
Iraqi forces, some of the most intense
urban fighting since the end of World
War II. In Raqqa, the battle was different.
Unlike the Iraqi military, with its
tanks and armored vehicles, the SDF are
lightly armed, and the militias required
even more intense air support during the
battle for Raqqa. In August alone, U.S.-led
forces loosed more than 5,775 individual
bombs, shells and missiles into the city.
As a result, the destruction in Raqqa is
complete, with the city totally empty
of its inhabitants. In interviews, some
former residents said the coalition’s
shelling was the reason they fled the city
in the end. A 47-year-old artist from the
area who asked to have his name withheld
because he believes his son is still in ISIS
custody said an airstrike on a hospital in
the village of Maysaloon prompted him
to flee with his family. “The whole village
escaped,” he said.
The ultimate toll on civilians is a mat-
ter of dispute. Airwars, a monitoring
group based in London, reported that 433
civilians likely died as a result of U.S.-led
strikes on Raqqa just in the month of Au-
gust. Colonel Ryan Dillon, a spokesman
for the U.S.-led coalition, said the military
has not yet been able to assess the deaths
claimed by Airwars but said the coalition
“strikes only valid military targets.” Still,
some civilian deaths may be uncovered as
the rubble is slowly cleared away. Michael
Enright, a British actor who volunteered
to fight with the Syrian militias battling
ISIS, described an incident during the
final days of the battle where he spotted
a civilian and an ISIS fighter through the
scope of a sniper rifle in a house across
the front line. “I’ve got all these moral di-
lemmas going on inside of me and getting
ready to shoot, and an American airstrike
comes in and just goesbang with that
house and the one next door,” he said. “I
thought, Well, no more moral dilemma.”
After a grueling four months of urban
fighting and heavy bombing by American
warplanes, the SDF trapped a few hun-
dred remaining Islamic State gunmen in a
tiny sliver of the city. After weeks of siege,
275 Syrian fighters among the ISIS core
Members of
the Syrian
Democratic
Forces at the
recently liberated
Naim Square
in Raqqa