Syrian Islamic State fighters evacuate Raqqa city
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A convoy of Islamic State fighters left Syria's Raqqa with some civilians overnight, the US-backed militias fighting them said on Sunday, bringing the battle for their one-time capital near its end.
There were conflicting accounts of whether the evacuees included both Syrian and foreign fighters and it was unclear how many jihadists remained to mount a last stand in the city.
"We still expect there to be difficult fighting," said Colonel Ryan Dillon, spokesman for the US-led international coalition backing the SDF in the war against Islamic State.
Raqqa was the first big Syrian city to fall to Islamic State as it declared a "caliphate" and rampaged through Syria and Iraq in 2014, becoming an operations centre for attacks abroad and the stage for some of its darkest atrocities.
