A great BBC site showing the battle from inside Raqqa:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/the_city_fit_for_no_one_raqqa_syria_islamic_state_groupExcerpt:
The SDF has its own sniper unit. Four foreigners, from Germany, Spain, the US and the UK.
A month ago, they were holed up in the old city, near the top of a building. It was getting dark, they were looking for any movement.
They would wait for hours, then a shot would ring out - hopefully a kill.
“We’re always on the offensive,” says Jac Holmes, from Bournemouth. “Daesh are always defending so they’ve always got the advantage. This has been their city for however many years now so they know it better than we do. It’s been very hard.”
That night was particularly hard, the foreigners smelt smoke in the building.
“Daesh have worked out how to start fires very quickly, they creep inside the building and try to smoke us out,” Jac says.
They could hear the IS fighters moving, as the smoke grew thicker, they began firing downstairs. It was their only way of escape, but IS was waiting. They were trapped.
But Jac and his unit had earlier found two IS suicide vests.
They were rigged with detonation cords, like grenades. They pulled the cords and threw both vests downstairs into the smoke and the darkness.
The explosion shook the building, Jac, says. “We don’t know how many we injured, they were all gone when we went down. The explosion was so big it put out the fire.”
I first met Jac two years ago near the Turkish border.
He was in hospital then, with a bandaged arm. It was an IS gunshot wound. He giggled about it at the time, appearing ill-equipped to be taking on IS.
Before Syria, he had worked in IT. I wondered at the time how long it would be before he was killed.
Jac has changed. The giggles are gone, his hair is longer, and he has a thick beard. He’s grown in stature.
He won’t discuss how many IS fighters he has killed. “Why does everyone ask that?” he asks.
But what is it like to kill a man?
“You feel nothing,” he says, then pauses, “you feel excitement.”
His weapon is an M16 with a large scope. It isn’t ideal, but Jac says: “We are never that far away from them, maybe 400m [1,300ft], it’s very close on the front line.”
Jac's M16His wage is $100 (£75) a month.
He’s ambivalent towards the socialist ideology of the Kurds. Anything he needs, from food to clothing, is given for free. The $100 keeps him in energy drinks and cigarettes.
His one credo, though, is his hatred of IS.
“The [sic] are a barbaric fascist terrorist organisation who essentially want to take over the world. If you don’t comply by their rules, they will kill you. It’s as simple as that.”
