RAQQA, Syria — US-backed militias have taken the Syrian city of Raqqa from the Islamic State, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday.
US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces raised a militia flag inside Raqqa stadium on Tuesday, one of the last remaining areas that were held by the Islamic State in its former capital, a Reuters witness said.
The flag of the Kurdish YPG, the strongest of the militias in the SDF, was planted in the middle of the stadium, where fighting had ended but which had not been fully cleared of landmines, militia fighters told the witness.
A local field commander said no Islamic State fighters remained even in their two remaining city strongholds.
Fighting on Monday night and Tuesday has focused on Raqqa's National Hospital and the nearby city stadium, two central positions in which the group, also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh, was well entrenched.
The fall of the city of Raqqa, where the Islamic State staged euphoric parades after its string of lightning victories in 2014, is a potent symbol of the jihadist movement's collapsing fortunes. From the city, the group planned attacks abroad.
The Islamic State has lost swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq this year, including its most prized possession, Mosul, and in Syria it has been forced back into a strip of the Euphrates valley and surrounding desert.
The SDF, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias, took the National Hospital in fierce fighting overnight and early on Tuesday, the spokesman Mostafa Bali said in a statement.
An SDF field commander who gave his name as Ager Ozalp said three militiamen had been killed on Monday by mines that have become an Islamic State trademark in its urban battles.
Another field commander, who gave his name as Abjal al-Syriani, said SDF fighters had entered the stadium and found burned weapons and documents.
The stadium in Raqqa had become the last major position held by the Islamic State after four months of battle in Raqqa and the departure of some of its fighters on Sunday, leaving only foreign jihadists to mount a last stand.
The SDF has been supported by a US-led international coalition with airstrikes and special forces on the ground since it started the battle for Raqqa city in early June.
The final SDF assault began Sunday after a group of Syrian jihadists quit the city under a deal with tribal elders, leaving only a hardcore of up to 300 fighters to defend the last positions, including the hospital and stadium.
Raqqa was the first big city the Islamic State captured in early 2014, before its rapid series of victories in Iraq and Syria brought millions of people under the rule of its self-declared caliphate, which passed laws and issued passports and money.
It used the city as a planning and operations center for its warfare in the Middle East and its string of attacks overseas, and for a time it imprisoned Western hostages there before killing them in slickly produced films distributed online.
The SDF advance since Sunday also brought it control over a central city roundabout where the Islamic State once displayed the severed heads of its enemies and which became one of its last lines of defense as the battle progressed.
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