U.S.-backed fighters gained ground against ISIS in the streets of Raqqa Wednesday, their command said, a day after breaking into the extremist's Syrian bastion.
The Syrian Democratic Forces have spent months advancing on the northern city and finally thrust into the eastern neighborhood of Al-Meshleb Tuesday.
Early Wednesday, the Arab and Kurdish fighters captured the neighborhood and the Harqal citadel to the west of the city, the command of Operation Wrath of the Euphrates said.
The citadel sits on a hilltop roughly two kilometers (just over a mile) from the city limits.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there was also fighting inside the Division 17 military complex, around two kilometers north of Raqqa, but the area had been heavily mined by ISIS.
The Britain-based monitoring group said the U.S.-led coalition had carried out heavy bombing raids on the city overnight.
Captured by the extremists in early 2014, Raqa became notorious as a hub for ISIS' operations in Syria, Iraq and beyond.
The city has been the scene of some of the group's worst atrocities, including gruesome executions, public displays of bodies and the trafficking of women.
An estimated 300,000 civilians were believed to have been living under ISIS rule in Raqa, including 80,000 displaced from other parts of Syria.
Thousands have fled in recent months to other parts of the province or to makeshift camps in territory newly captured by the SDF.
Formed in 2015, the SDF is an alliance of Arab and Kurdish fighters that has been backed by the U.S.-led coalition with air support, military advisers and weapons deliveries
