At least 33 people were killed in an air-strike on a school sheltering displaced residents outside the ISIS-held city of Raqqa [12], in northern Syria, according to monitoring activists on the ground. The behind-lines anti-ISIS monitoring group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently [13], which has heroically [14] reported on realities under Islamic State rule in the city, said the school at the village of al-Mansoura was sheltering some 50 families when it was levelled by air-strikes earlier this week. The raid is believed to have been carried out by US warplanes. "The massacres committed by [the] US-led coalition in Raqqa is unacceptable," the group said in a statement. "The international community must intervene to stop this." (The Independent [15])
The strike comes as US-led coalition aircraft are for the first time carrying out an air-lift of local allied fighters in preparation for a final offensive on Raqqa, the de facto ISIS capital. The Pentagon said fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF [16]) were dropped behind ISIS lines close to the Tabqa dam, west of Raqqa. (BBC News [17])
Following last week's evident US bombing of a mosque in northern Syria, killing some 50 worshippers [18], President Trump [19] seems to be gearing up to make good on his campaign pledge to "bomb the shit out of 'em [20]." The fact that the Kurdish-led SDF is cooperating with the US while it is the Arabs under jihadist rule that are getting bombed further deepens the growing enmity [21] between Kurds and Arabs in northern Syria.
Tellingly, the Kurdish YPG [21] militia, main pillar of the SDF alliance, is also closely coordinating [21] with Russia, the foreign sponsor and protector of the Assad dictatorship. All this points to a new convergence between Trump, Purin and Assad—with the Kurds (desperate to keep alive their autonomous zone [22] in a pincer between Turkey and ISIS) sucessfully groomed as proxies.
But allowing the Kurdish-led SDF to keep Raqqa will antagonize Turkey. It is more likely that the SDF will be pressured to turn it over to Assad—as the SDF has already turned over [23] some villages taken from ISIS. If Raqqa is thusly turned over, it will be a bitter betrayal of the city's inhabitants, and the Syrian revolution generally. But it should remove all doubt that the US is doing anything other than collaborating with Assad [21] in the Syrian war.
