ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The civil administration of the strategic city of Tabqa is going to be handed over to Tabqa’s city council, the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria announced on Sunday, as a monitoring group has reported anti-ISIS coalition ground forces advancing on three northern axes towards Raqqa.
YPG’s press office announced that after its forces have cleaned [ISIS] remnants from Tabqa, an alliance between security forces and the civil administration of Tabqa’s city council will be formed to protect the region.
Ground forces of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced it had concluded a 50-day operation that resulted in the retaking of Tabqa airport, dam and city from ISIS on May 10.
The YPG statement added that the dam is a Syrian national institutional that will serve all areas of the country.
The primarily Kurdish YPG and the Syrian Arab Coalition comprise the SDF, which is the US-led international coalition’s partnered ground force in northern Syria.
The Coalition had announced on May 10 that a few neighborhoods in Tabqa still contained ISIS resistance.
With the taking of Tabqa, ground forces will be able to concentrate on ridding ISIS from its de facto capital of Raqqa about 40 kilometers to the northeast.
"The arming of the Syrian Democratic Forces is going to be very important for the liberation of Raqqa. We want to make sure that the Syrian Arab Coalition and the Syrian Democratic Forces have the weapons and the equipment that they need there to be successful against ISIS, the Coalition's spokesperson US Col Ryan Dillon told Rudaw on Friday.
"These are weapons that will be metered out to the Syrian Democratic Forces for their assault, for their liberation of Raqqa,” Dillon added.
The US-led coalition officials told Rudaw English it had seen “open source” reports of written agreement between the SDF and the coalition guaranteeing that SDF would be the only force to liberate Raqqa; however, the official said they were not able to confirm their validity.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based observatory group reported on Monday clashes between advancing SDF ground forces and ISIS fighters on multiple axes around Raqqa.
The reported clashes were four kilometers northeast of Raqqa, eight kilometers to the north, and 13 kilometers to the northwest of the ISIS stronghold.
SOHR added that the Coalition was supporting the operations with shelling and “US special forces.”
