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US-backed forces take 90% of Raqqa from Isis in major offensive From the front line in Raqqa: Isis to lose Syrian 'capital' in days after 'surprise attack' by US-backed forces
(about 9 hours later)
A Syrian monitoring group says Isis has lost control of up to 90 per cent of its de facto capital Raqqa following a series of successful operations by US-backed forces. “Five minutes until the next strike, in Rameylah,” a Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander says into her walkie-talkie, repeating the coordinates twice. “Four minutes. Be careful!” 
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday almost all of the city was now held by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). A statement from the SDF's top command said Operation Euphrates Wrath has reached its "final stages"  after Isis first occupied the city more than three years ago. Three minutes and 40 seconds later – slightly ahead of schedule – a loud thud shakes the windows of the civilian house which serves as an interim SDF base in a west Raqqa suburb. A US-led coalition bomb hits its target in an Isis-held neighbourhood two kilometres away. 
After steady progress from both the west and east approaches to the city, the SDF said it had managed to open a new northern front, descriing the campaign as "nearing its end". While every so often a flurry of air strikes or the whine of a Apache helicopter punctures the hot, heavy air, Raqqa’s front line is for the most part very quiet. 
The SDF, a coalition made up of both Kurdish and Arab fighters, managed to encircle the city in June, when the full-scale offensive to oust the militants began. As the SDF advance has slowed to a house-by-house battle, Kurdish YPG (male) and YPJ (female) fighting units are stationed in every building along the road. Their main job is to hold the now solid front-line position; snipers train their sights at any sign of movement in the streets ahead, wary of suicide car bomb attacks. 
The  major operation to push past the National Hospital in the city centre began over the weekend after a lull in fighting. Raqqa, like the battle for Mosul in Iraq - which until July was the largest city under Isis' control - has been a gruelling building-by-building fight.  A statement released on Wednesday by the SDF, the US-backed coalition of Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian and Yazidi fighters, said that 80 per cent of the city’s neighbourhoods had been retaken from militants after a “surprise attack” on Isis.
At least 300,000 Raqqawis have fled in recent weeks, braving Isis sniper fire and improvised explosives devices (IEDs), as well as US-led coalition bombing.   The overnight offensive had recaptured grain silos to the north of the city’s outskirts and opened a new front, which top command said it considered “the final stages” of Operation Euphrates Wrath.
The UN estimates 70,000 civilians are still trapped inside with very little food and water and no electricity in temperatures which still exceed 40 degrees Celsius.  Several soldiers on the front told The Independent they believed the campaign to free Raqqa from three years of Isis rule – which began in earnest in June – will end in the next week or two. 
It is not clear how many militants remain in the city. Several Kurdish YPG fighters - who are spearheading the SDF campaign - told The Independent they believed most of their opponents have already escaped to the desert, relying on sniper units and mines to slow the SDF 's advance.  It is not clear how many militants are left in the city. A month ago it was estimated less than 1,000 remain, and that most commanders and other important figures have already fled to the jihadists’ last strongholds in the eastern desert.
The coalition, however, is still dropping mortars and bombs on a huge scale, levelling entire neighbourhoods in the process.  Concerns over the mounting civilian death toll caused by the strikes have been raised by NGOs and the UN. US Central Command, which co-ordinates the Raqqa campaign, has repeatedly said the coalition takes "all reasonable precautions during the planning and execution of air strikes".  Snipers and improvised explosive devices, hundreds of which have been hidden on the roads and inside houses, have been responsible for the majority of recent casualties, rather than Isis counter-offensives. 
When Raqqa falls Isis’ so-called caliphate across eastern Syria and western Iraq will be all but destroyed, with militants relegated to a handful of remaining desert outposts.  One soldier, who asked not to be named, said they had witnessed a member of the SDF be rushed to a field hospital, foot blown off and shin bone protruding from his fatigues, after he apparently entered a civilian home to try and loot it. 
As Isis collapses as a land-holding force, analysts expect the organisation to morph into an insurgency group across both countries, stepping up terror attacks and bombings in both the Middle East and across the world.  The Pentagon says the SDF numbers 40,000 troops, but they are for the most part a quickly trained and inexperienced army, and the bonds holding its various Kurdish, Arab and other component units together are not strong.  
Many recruits are clearly younger than the official joining age of 18. On a ruined street where a lamp post lays across one side of the road, a pick-up truck carrying about a dozen boys – all grinning, all gripping Kalashnikov rifles – speeds past, stirring up the dust and ash which now coats everything in the city.
They face an enemy which is willing to fight to the death. 
“Of course they’re young,” says Darsim Ezetran, a member of the YJS, the Yazidi women fighters, who at 26 is the oldest in her unit. “All the older ones have been killed already.” 
At a mosque being used as a temporary shelter for internally displaced persons fleeing the fighting, young children guzzle bottle after bottle of water in the 40C heat. 
Those who have made it out are grateful to the SDF. “They found us, they guided us here,” says 73-year-old Abdul-Rahman Abdullah. He hobbled the deadly 700m from his home past the front line with a false foot, lost during the fighting for Raqqa between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and Free Syrian Army rebels four years ago. 
At least 300,000 Raqqawis have fled in recent weeks, braving Isis as well as US-led coalition bombing. But 70,000 more are still trapped inside the city’s dense central neighbourhoods with very little food and water.
A huge convoy of trucks that have driven all the way from northern Iraq – through the self-declared autonomous Kurdish region of northern Syria and into the Arab Raqqa Governorate – rumble past, carrying brand new Humvees and other reinforcements for the US special forces present in the city.
“Do they carry water, bulldozers, will they stay to help rebuild?” Abdullah asks. “Daesh [Isis] will be defeated here soon. But what happens next?"