SDF Not to Hand over Newly-Captured Raqqa City to Syrian Army

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) raised hostilities against Damascus after it declared that it won't hand over control of Raqqa city to the central government.

The SDF said on Friday that the political future of Raqqa city and province would be determined “within the framework of a decentralized, federal, democratic Syria.”

SDF Spokesman Talal Silo said the group would hand over the control of the city to what he called “the Raqqa Civil Council,” likely a Kurdish body.

Syrian Minister of National Reconciliation Affairs Ali Haidar reacted by saying that Raqqa’s future could only be discussed “as part of the final political structure of the Syrian state.”

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), meanwhile, said that the SDF’s purported operations in Raqqa have killed civilians and damaged infrastructure in the city.

“When you’re killing around 1,200 civilians — nearly half of them women and children — and destroying 80 percent of the city, that’s not liberating Raqqa,” Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the SOHR, told Arab News daily.
 [farsnews.com]
 21/10/17
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Related:

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• Barbarous Crimes : 45 civilians killed in airstrikes by US-led “international coalition” in Raqqa
• Boucliers humains : l'ONU accuse la coalition US d'avoir violé le droit international en Syrie
• 'Staggering' Civilian Deaths from US-Led Air Strikes in Raqqa: UN

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