Al-Raqqah

BELGRADE - The Syrian army continues to move into the northern province of Raqqa, home to the de facto capital of the self-claimed caliphate of the Islamic State (IS/ISIS/ISIL) group fighting in Syria and neighboring Iraq.

The army first pushed into Raqqa Saturday.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu has again said he believes that cities in Syria - Aleppo, Raqqa, Homs and Damascus - will "one day be liberated." 

"One day, God willing, Aleppo, Raqqa, Homs and Damascus will be free," Davuto?lu said on April 11 in a speech in Turkey's southeastern province of ?anl?urfa. 

France is to 'intensify Syria operations' after the Paris attacks, said French President François Hollande, while police raided homes of suspected Islamist militants across France overnight arresting 23 people, as French fighter aircrafts have bombed the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) targets in Syria's Raqqa city late Nov. 15. 

After vowing to give a merciless response to the attacks at multiple venues in Paris, France carried out air raids in Raqqa, Syria. 10 fighter jets dropped 20 bombs targeting Islamic State command and control centers, ammunition depots and a training camp.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has claimed responsibility for last week's slaying of two Syrian journalists in Turkey's southeastern province of ?anl?urfa.

In a regime where rapes and forced marriages for child brides are considered legitimate and with a lack of female medical staff the health of women is at high risk, especially now that women’s clinics supervised by male doctors in Raqqa are shut down by ISIS.

Seljuk and Ottoman era structures are being deliberately destroyed in Syria, according to a professor who previously worked on these artifacts.

Leishmaniasis is an illness that eats away at the flesh and in some cases causes death. The city of Raqqa in Islamist-held eastern Syria has been home to this disease since September 2013. Raqqa is the stronghold of ISIS in the country.

Eighty-three percent of all the lights in Syria have gone out since the start of the conflict four years ago, a research report based on satellite images said on March 12.
   

The increasing number of young women in Europe traveling to Syria and Iraq to marry jihadist fighters is breaking entire families apart, while sometimes resulting in a few real-life heroic stories.