The Pentagon has announced its plans to liberate Syrian city of Raqqa, amid the ongoing Mosul offensive.
US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter (Photo: Reuters / J. Ernst)
The US Defense Department said that US military is preparing for an operation in the Syrian city of Raqqa, which is considered as a capital of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group. An announcement of the preparation of the operation in Raqqa, amid the fact that the operation in Iraqi Mosul still has virtually gained no momentum, was made by US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter in Paris.
According to Carter, the coalition is preparing to develop a plan of the operation for liberation of Raqqa from the IS without involvement of Russia in the process. When Carter and his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian were asked by journalists about terms of the operation, they noted that it is still too much early to talk about the terms, but “everything goes according to plan.”
Apparently, the operation in Mosul also goes according to a US plan: terrorists, surrounded on three sides, manage to start a counter-offensive, as well as to leave the city, moving in the western direction, to the Syrian border.
It is enough strange that the US and its allies did not plan such large-scale operations until the strategic initiative in Syria has been on the side of terrorists and ‘moderate’ militants. Now the US imitates frenzied activity in order to add political points to the candidate from the Democratic Party before the elections. We can assume that in the near future the world will see footage, showing American and Iraqi soldiers, installing flags in Mosul… For this, it will be enough to take a video of some ‘liberated’ hut somewhere on the outskirts of Mosul, and then the ‘most honest’ Western media will start their work.
Amid this, reports that terrorists tried to attack positions of Syrian troops near Damascus come from Syria. According to the SANA news agency, terrorists of the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (previously known as the Al-Nusra Front, a Syrian branch of the al-Qaeda) group, used armored vehicles. The Syrian Army repulsed the attack, killing several dozens of terrorists and destroying three tanks and two off-road vehicles, equipped with machine guns.
A day before, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that Russian and Syrian fighter jets have not been carrying out airstrikes on Aleppo during a week. The information was released as a refutation of a statement of Western media that the Russian air power allegedly struck the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo.
