The international coalition battling the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL) will begin a final push on the extremists' Syrian stronghold al-Raqa in the coming days, French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Friday (March 24th).
"Today, we can say that al-Raqa is surrounded and the battle will begin in the coming days," Le Drian told France's CNEWS television.
"This will be a very hard battle but essential."
But on the ground, the Kurdish-Arab alliance spearheading the battle for ISIL's de facto Syrian capital expressed caution about how soon the battle for al-Raqa would begin, AFP reported.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been working for months to encircle al-Raqa.
But a spokesman for the alliance said there was still work to do.
"The operation to besiege al-Raqa will take several weeks and that will then lead to the official launch of the operation," Talal Sello told AFP.
