AALIYAH, Syria: US-backed Kurdish and Arab fighters announced on Saturday a new phase in their campaign for the Daesh group’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, but said they needed more weapons to win.
The Syrian Democratic Forces launched their campaign to capture the city last November and have taken some ground further up the Euphrates Valley but are still some distance away.
The SDF “announce the beginning of the third phase to liberate Raqqa and its surroundings, which will target the eastern part of the province,” spokeswoman Jihan Sheikh Ahmed said.
Speaking in the village of Aaliyah, north of the city, Ahmed said 750 more Arab fighters had joined the SDF after being trained by the US-led coalition.
“Coalition forces provided our Arab contingent with vehicles, but the numbers are very small and we hope they will increase in the coming days,” SDF spokesman Talal Sello said on Saturday.
Local SDF commander Rojda Felat said additional equipment that had been requested was not arriving quickly enough.
“The weapons that we need to liberate Raqqa are tanks, Dushkas (heavy machine guns) and armored vehicles,” Felat, 38, told AFP.
Felat could give no timeline for when the SDF would reach the outskirts of Raqqa, but said: “In this phase, we will get closer.”
Of the roughly 30,000 fighters within the alliance, around two-thirds belong to the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Turkey considers a “terrorist” group.