Forces comb ghost city Raqa after IS ouster

RAQA, Syria: US-backed forces combed the ruins of Raqa for survivors and bombs on Wednesday, after retaking the Syrian city from Islamic State group terrorists and dealing their dreams of statehood a fatal blow.

A lightning final assault by the Syrian Democratic Forces on Tuesday saw terrorist defences collapse faster than expected and the SDF claim a landmark victory in the three-year fight against IS.

SDF fighters flushed jihadist holdouts from Raqa’s main hospital and municipal stadium, wrapping up a more than four-month offensive against what used to be the inner sanctum of IS’s self-proclaimed "caliphate".

On Wednesday, SDF forces fired into the air and danced the traditional Middle Eastern dabke to music blasting into the otherwise eerie silence of the city. Inside the stadium, the militia’s flag was raised, as bulldozers worked to clear ground of explosives that IS has strewn throughout the city.

Many roads were still closed off, and access to the hospital was blocked while fighters worked to clear it. Teams of SDF fighters were deployed across the rubble-strewn streets to look for unexploded ordnance and booby traps left behind by the jihadists.

"They are making sure there are no more sleeper cells" in Raqa, SDF spokesman Mustefa Bali told AFP. "Mine-clearing operations and the re-opening of the city are under way," Bali said, adding that his organisation would only formally announce the liberation of the city once they are completed.

The SDF and the Kurdish intelligence services issued clear instructions forbidding the tens of thousands of displaced families from attempting to return to their homes. "We urge our people... who fled IS rule not to return to the city for their own security until it is rid of terrorist explosives," the Kurdish internal security services said in a statement.

The loss of Raqa left IS ruling over a rump "caliphate" straddling the Iraqi-Syrian border and covering a fraction of the territory it held when it declared its "state" in July 2014. The US-led coalition supporting anti-IS forces in Iraq and Syria said on Tuesday that the jihadists had lost 87 percent of the territory they had three years ago.

Brett McGurk, the White House’s envoy to the multinational coalition, said on social media that IS had lost 6,000 fighters in Raqa and described the organisation as "pathetic and a lost cause."

Raqa was one of the most emblematic IS bastions, at the heart of both its military operations and its propaganda. Several of the most high-profile attacks IS claimed in the West -- such as the 2015 massacres in Paris -- are believed to have been at least partly masterminded from Raqa, earning the city the nickname of "terror central".