{"id":70794,"date":"2017-03-12T10:15:12","date_gmt":"2017-03-12T14:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=70794"},"modified":"2017-03-12T10:15:12","modified_gmt":"2017-03-12T14:15:12","slug":"syrian-kurds-poised-to-take-raqqa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=70794","title":{"rendered":"Syrian Kurds poised to take Raqqa"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to the Associated Press<\/a>, Syrian Kurds are confident that they’ll be able to take the ISIS capital city of Raqqa, Syria with massive US assistance;<\/p>\n

Gen. Joseph Votel, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, signaled Thursday that there will be a larger and longer American military presence in Syria to accelerate the fight against IS and quell friction within the complicated mix of warring factions there.<\/p>\n

The SDF spokeswoman said their numbers are increasing with more residents of newly-liberated areas from IS joining the ethnically-mixed force, which has been the most effective group on the ground in Syria in the battle against IS.<\/p>\n

“We have enough forces to liberate Raqqa with the help of the coalition,” Sheikh Ehmed said, adding that their troops received intelligence that the Islamic State group is moving some of its leaders outside the city and are digging tunnels in preparation for intense street battles \u2014 much like those underway in neighboring Iraq where the Iraqi forces, backed by the U.S.-led coalition, are fighting to rout IS from the western part of the city of Mosul, the extremists’ last remaining urban stronghold in Iraq.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, Turkey doesn’t like the idea of Kurdish troops leading the assault since they consider the Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, to be a terrorist organization.<\/p>\n

Turkey’s military said Turkish troops and Turkey-backed Syrian opposition forces have killed \u2014 or “neutralized” \u2014 71 Syrian Kurdish fighters in northern Syria this week. The operations are part of Turkey’s months-long incursion into its war-torn neighbor in a push against IS but also in an effort to restrict the U.S.-backed SDF.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to the Associated Press, Syrian Kurds are confident that they’ll be able to take the … Syrian Kurds poised to take Raqqa<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}