US-led coalition takes Raqqa's Grand Mosque away from ISIS

In a long fight punctuated by moral victories, this may be the biggest yet: The US-led coalition in Iraq and Syria announced Monday morning that it had secured the historic Grand Mosque of Raqqa, a "milestone" in the multiyear struggle to rout the Islamic State and take back its de facto capital.

A spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve credited the US's motley crew of ground allies, the Syrian Democratic Forces, with clearing the mosque on Saturday.

"The liberation of this historic landmark is a testimony to the dedication and courage of the SDF as they fight to defeat ISIS in Raqqa," Col. Ryan Dillon said in a press release Monday. "The SDF have made consistent incremental gains in the urban terrain of the city, fighting block by block, and applying increasing pressure on ISIS each day while evacuating civilians along the way."

Since the US-led campaign against the makeshift Islamic State capital began, members of the terrorist group also known as ISIS have left Raqqa in droves. The coalition has dumped historic levels of ordnance in its struggle against ISIS fighters and now faces a difficult struggle to find and wipe out remaining resisters, who have resorted to tunnels, among other tactics, to avoid the onslaught.

Dillon said advancing forces this weekend had evacuated "thousands of civilians" and took measures to limit damage to the mosque itself, which ISIS had captured in 2014, after making Raqqa its beachhead for a global Islamic caliphate that never was.

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