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U.S. Allies Announce Offensive to Retake ISIS 'Capital' in Raqqa, Syria
U.S.-allied forces in Syria launched an offensive on the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa on Tuesday, the group announced on Twitter.
Members of what the U.S. calls the Syrian Democratic Forces gather after a training session at a firing range in northern Syria on May 21.Robert Burns / AP
By Ammar Cheikh Omar, Aziz Akyavas, Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube
U.S.-allied forces in Syria launched an large-scale offensive on the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa on Tuesday, the group said.
The Syrian Democratic Forces, an umbrella group including Kurdish and Arab fighters, said on the social network that it launched a three-pronged attack on the extremists' de facto capital.
SDF's commanders Rojda Felat told NBC News that 25,000 Kurdish forces were involved in the operation.
Kurdish media organization Rudaw reported the "massive" assault also included the Kurdish People's Protection Units — known as the YPG — which is a secular Kurdish force fighting ISIS in the country.
A U.S. defense official told NBC News that Kurdish and Arab forces were still between 30 and 40 miles north of Raqqa, and just beginning to move toward the city.
The fighters will have travel through small towns and most likely encounter ISIS forces on the way, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
ISIS has made Raqqa the seat of the caliphate it declared in June 2014. Situated on the Euphrates river, the northern-central city is 100 miles east of Aleppo and 130 miles west of the Iraqi border.
Aziz Akyavas is an NBC News Producer based in Istanbul, Turkey.
Jim Miklaszewski
Jim Miklaszewski is the chief Pentagon correspondent for NBC News. On 9/11, he was the first at the scene to report that the Pentagon had been attacked and has since led the network's coverage of the war in Afghanistan.
Since joining NBC in 1985, Miklaszewski was a White House correspondent during the Clinton and Bush administrations, covering President Clinton's transition from Little Rock, his many trips abroad including Moscow and the Middle East and his reelection. He was also an NBC floor reporter at the Democratic and Republican conventions in 1996 and 2000.
In the Bush White House, Miklaszewski reported on the Gulf War with Iraq, summits with Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin and the Bush reelection campaign in 1992.
Miklaszewski has logged considerable foreign experience with battlefront coverage of wars in Lebanon, El Salvador and the Falkland Islands. He also covered the United States air raid on Libya, and the "tanker wars" in the Persian Gulf.