ISIS warlords are so short of troops they’re now using one-eyed snipers and one-legged soldiers on the front lines
ISIS warlords battling to save their self-declared capital from being recaptured are so short of troops they are using disabled fighters to fill their ranks.
A new video showing clashes with Syrian forces besieging the city of Raqqa reveal a motley bunch of Jihadists plugging holes in the front line.
The footage shows a one-legged man operating a high-calibre truck-mounted heavy weapon.
And it also captures a one-eyed, one-handed fighter who appears to have been disfigured in previous clashes pledging to destroy the enemies of the Islamic State.
Another image is that of a bearded-man said to be in his 80s mentoring and giving weapons training to youngsters orphaned in the bitter fighting as the regime tries to groom the next generation of brain-washed radicals.
But in reality the days of Islamic State’s caliphate in the Middle East are numbered.
The group’s numbers are in terminal decline thanks to devastating airstrikes and attacks by ground forces and the loss of key cities.
Iraqi and Kurdish fighters have retaken the city of Mosul and Raqqa is likely to be the next key stronghold to fall.
Intelligence services believe that around 20,000 ISIS - also known as Daesh - terrorists have been killed across Syria and Iraq.
The tide of recruits joining the fight from Western countries like the UK has also been stemmed by tighter border controls.
And hundreds of disillusioned mainly foreign fighters who tried to leave Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have been killed by the terror group to stop them warning potential recruits about its methods, revealed former US Marine Corps general John Allen.
“As the pressure increases, we are going to see more and more foreign fighters trying to get out,” he said.
“Daesh has killed hundreds of its own foreign fighters to keep them from getting out and carrying the message to the broader community and to prospective recruits that while they may have thought this was going to be an Islamic utopia, it is turning out to be a combat hell.’’
Disillusioned fighters who made it home could deliver powerful messages to others considering joining, he said.
“If they do get out, then we’ve got to work hard to rehabilitate them back into their communities,” said General Allen, who commanded US and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and served as President Barack Obama’s special envoy on Islamic State.
It was reported last week that the US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters battling to oust ISIS from Raqqa has managed to push the militants out of their de facto capital’s Old City.
“Our forces today seized full control of the Old City in Raqqa after clashes with ISIS,” Syrian Democratic Force spokesman Talal Sello said.
“We are on the edges of [ISIS’s] security quarter in the city centre, where most of its main bases are,” he added.
The fight to reclaim Raqqa was launched in June this year after SDF ground forces managed to completely surround the city.
Mosul fell to Iraqi coalition forces in July after a gruelling nine-month-long battle.
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