Thousands of civilians and SDF fighters were killed as a battle raged on to liberate Raqqa from ISIS. The coalition dropped more shells and bombs on Raqqa in August 2017 than it did on all of Afghanistan in the same month, according to Airwars, a group that monitors the human cost of the US and Russian air campaigns in Syria and Iraq. In June 2016, a Kurdish-led group called the Syrian Democratic Forces launched operations to capture the city.īacked by US airstrikes and artillery fire, it took the SDF four months of street fighting to recapture Raqqa.Īs the battle dragged on, the US-led coalition intensified its bombardment. Planning for some of the major attacks in Europe in recent years, including the 2015 Paris attacks, which killed 130 people, and the 2016 suicide attacks on the Brussels airport and subway, which killed 32, was traced back to Raqqa. In October 2017, the city was declared liberated I wasn't scared of dying or anything like that. On the other I wanted to be a part of something that was historical and groundbreaking. Under the fanatics' reign atrocity followed atrocity - including the beheading of Western hostages by Jihadi John, and the mass murders of the Islamic fundamentalists' rivals and the civilians under their rule.ĭuttenhofer said of traveling to the country: 'On one hand, I selfishly wanted to fight ISIS. While it's now liberated, Raqqa was the first city to fall into the hands of Islamic State militants and became its de facto capital. Suburbs targeted by the Syrian government - scattered across an area known as eastern Ghouta - have been subjected to a weeks-long bombardment that has killed and wounded hundreds of people. The violence in the capital and nearby areas came as scores of pro-government gunmen began entering the northern Kurdish enclave of Afrin – where Turkish forces are fighting Syrian Kurdish troops (the YPG) in a separate offensive. Most recently, eyes have turned to Damascus, where Syrian airstrikes killed nearly 130 people in two days this week. Over seven years, Syria's civil war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, forced millions from their homes and disturbed the regional balance of power. The city was regularly hit by airstrikes from the Syrian government, Russia and the United States as they tried to rid the city of rebels.įollowing a lengthy battle in October 2017, the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) - its main backbone being the YPG - declared the city liberated from ISIS. Two years before Duttenhofer arrived in Syria in 2016, Raqqa had become ISIS's de-facto capital. Duttenhofer said that games like Call of Duty (a still pictured above) taught him practical skills which he used to survive and meant he was already familiar with weapons
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