Al-Assad Vows to Retake ’Every Inch’ of Syria
Local Editor
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said Thursday that Raqqa is not a priority target for his forces, saying his goal is to retake "every inch" of Syrian territory.
"Raqqa is a symbol," Assad said in an interview with French media, while asserting that extremist attacks carried out in France were "not necessarily prepared" in the Daesh [the Arabic acronym for the Takfiri terrorist ‘ISIS/ISIL'] stronghold in Syria.
"You have Daesh close to Damascus, you have them everywhere," al-Assad said.
"Everywhere is a priority depending on the development of the battle," he said, as a new round of peace talks was set to kick off in the Kazakh capital Astana.
"They are in Palmyra now and in the eastern part of Syria," he said in the interview in Damascus with Europe 1 radio and the TF1 and LCI television channels.
"For us it is all the same, Raqqa, Palmyra, Idlib, it's all the same."
The Syrian leader said it was the "duty of any government" to regain control of "every inch" of its territory.
After a string of major losses in both Iraq and Syria, the extremists' two main strongholds of Mosul and Raqqa are both under attack from forces backed by a US-led coalition.
After a massive, four-month campaign, Iraqi forces are tightening the noose on Mosul, while in Syria, an Arab-Kurd alliance, the Syrian Democratic Forces, has begun advancing on Raqqa.
Also in the interview, al-Assad categorically denied that his government practices torture and reiterated his rejection of recent allegations by Amnesty International of executions and atrocities perpetrated at a prison near Damascus.
Al-Assad affirmed earlier on Wednesday that any step pertaining to Syria's future is up to the Syrian people to decide.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
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