A whole family received martyrdom during raids

Syrian governmental fighter jets carried out a number of raids against the Syrian city of Daraa, as they targeted the strongholds of Syrian opposition there with no information about humanitarian losses. The bombardment comes to respond attacks from the Islamist factions against the Syrian governmental troops in Kherbet Ghazala of Daraa’s countryside leading to the killing of a number of governmental fighters.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), on Tuesday, carried out air strikes and artillery shelling on areas, east of the city of Raqqa. Qasioun News reported that the Syrian Democratic Forces conducted air strikes and artillery shelling on the area of Dawar al-Barazi, 23 Shabat Street and the neighborhood of Abu al-Hays, east of the city of Raqqa, however, no casualties were reported.

Meanwhile, Army Aviation carried out several air strikes on the old bridge area, south of Raqqa, causing only material damage to the area. Furthermore, clashes broke out between the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Islamic State group in al-Sena’a area, north of the city of Raqqa. Noteworthy, Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by the international coalition, retook strategic locations and neighborhoods in the city, since last Tuesday.  

United Nations war crimes investigators said on Wednesday that intensified coalition air strikes supporting an assault by U.S.-backed forces on Islamic State’s stronghold of Raqqa in Syria were causing a “staggering loss of civilian life”.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a group of Kurdish and Arab militias supported by a U.S.-led coalition, began to attack Raqqa a week ago with the aim of taking it from the jihadists. The SDF, supported by heavy coalition air strikes, have taken territory to the west, east and north of the city.

Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry also told the Human Rights Council that 10 agreements between the Syrian government and armed groups to evacuate fighters and civilians from besieged areas, including eastern Aleppo, “in some cases amount to war crimes” as civilians had “no choice”

In Raqqa’s southern countryside, a man received martyrdom with his family due to the increasing raids launched by the International Coalition, as the extremist militants used moral shells against the Syrian Democratic Forces supported by the International Coalition.

The Syrian army has made a sudden advance against Islamic State in the desert area west of Raqqa, a military media unit run by its ally Hezbollah said on Tuesday. Syria’s vast deserts have become the main theater of war in recent weeks as rival forces race to capture ground from the jihadist group, which is slowly retreating on several fronts.

The area between Ithriya and Tabqa, west of Islamic State’s de facto Syrian capital Raqqa, is important for the army since it can be used to attack government-held towns and supply routes. According to the Hezbollah military media unit, the army has punched southwards to the Ithriya-Tabqa highway, a distance of about 20 miles (32 km) from its positions south of Maskaneh.

The road was used by Islamic State to attack positions along the government’s main supply route to Aleppo near Ithriya, and, if fully captured, would help the army advance into the desert. It captured the villages of Rajm Askar, Bir Inbaj, Zahar Um Baj, Jab Aziz, Jab al-Ghanem, Abu Sousa and Jab Abyad from the jihadist group, the media unit said.

Syria’s army is aided in the six-year-long war by Shi’ite militias backed by Iran, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and by Russian air power. A war monitor, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, also said the Syrian army had advanced in that area. Al-Rusafa oil field is located nearby.

The advance will help the army to relieve pressure on the Ithriya-Khanaser road, part of the government’s supply route to Aleppo, the Observatory said. The army has also launched attacks to push Islamic State back from the Salamiya-Ithriya road, part of the same supply route, in recent weeks.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a group of militias backed by a U.S.-led coalition, holds Tabqa, northeast of the advances the army was reported to have made on Tuesday. A week into its assault on Raqqa, the SDF on Monday reached the walls of the Old City from the eastern suburbs, the war monitor and a militia spokesman said. It is also pushing into Raqqa from the west and the north.

On humanitarian side, Islamic State militants enslaved Noura Khalaf for three years, dragging her from her small Iraqi village across their territory in Syria. They bought and sold her five times before she was finally freed with her children last week.

Khalaf is one of many Yazidi women that Kurdish fighters in northern Syria have set out to free from Islamic State in covert operations, a female Kurdish militia commander told Reuters. They have dubbed the operation “revenge for the women of Sinjar”, the homeland of Iraq’s ancient Yazidi minority which Islamic State overran in the summer of 2014.

The militants slaughtered, enslaved and raped thousands of people when they rampaged through northern Iraq, purging its Yazidi community. They abducted Yazidi women as sex slaves and gunned down male relatives, witnesses and Iraqi officials say. Nearly 3,000 women are believed to be still in captivity.