The city has been the scene of some of IS' worst atrocities, including gruesome executions, public displays of bodies and the trafficking of women.
It was one of the twin pivots of IS's so-called "caliphate", with Mosul in neighbouring Iraq - where US-backed forces are also bearing down on the jihadists. "They have reached the city but they have not entered any of its buildings".
The Raqqa campaign commander Rojda Felat said an assault had begun on the al-Mushleb district at the city's south-eastern outskirts, confirming an earlier report by the United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, an activist group in Raqqa, said people attempted to flee after previous coalition air raids targeted the old and new bridge areas near Raqqa city.
Brett McGurk, the USA special envoy to the coalition against Islamic State, said in a tweet Tuesday that "major operations" led by the SDF had begun to "liberate Raqqa" from Islamic State and "return the city to its people".
Lt. Gen. Steve Townsend, the top USA commander in Iraq, said the twin offensives against Mosul and Raqqa are hurting the Islamic State group's prestige and ability to recruit new loyalists.
Turkey's Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Tuesday his country will respond if an offensive by the SDF on Raqqa poses a security threat to Turkey. "We all saw the heinous attack in Manchester, England", said Townsend. "ISIS threatens all our nations, not just Iraq and Syria, but in our homelands as well". Raqqa is on the Euphrates river.
It then scored a series of victories in the wider province, including capturing the strategic town of Tabqa and its adjacent dam in May.
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The semi-official Tasnim news agency said on of the wounded people had died in hospital, bringing the death toll to 17. The Islamic State group claimed the Tehran attacks; no link has emerged of Saudi Arabia's involvement .
"The SDF will announce tomorrow the date of the start of the fifth stage of the campaign to liberate Raqqa which will include an assault on the city of Raqqa", the SDF said in a statement.
A few hours after declaring the start of the "Great Battle" to oust ISIS from Raqqa, US-backed forces "opened their way into the city", making progress in the eastern neighbourhood of al-Mashalab.
The US-led coalition has said 3,000 to 4,000 Daesh fighters are thought to be holed up in Raqqa city, where they have erected defenses against the anticipated assault.
As the frontlines draw near to and enter the city, which is ringed by landmines to keep outsiders out and insiders in, civilians will inevitably find themselves under fire.
The United States and other countries in the global, anti-Islamic State coalition are providing air support, weapons, training and intelligence to the Kurdish and Arab components of the SDF. The same route had been used by IS fighters, Abdel Rahman said. An estimated 300,000 civilians were believed to have been living under IS rule in Raqqa, including 80,000 displaced from other parts of the country. Thousands have managed to flee to areas held by the SDF.
But there are risks for civilians who try to escape the last cities under militant rule. Yesterday, UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein accused IS of murdering dozens of civilians to prevent them from fleeing Mosul last week. The coalition says it tries hard to avoid civilian casualties and investigates any that are reported.
Deraa, the city where the Syrian war began in March 2011 with anti-government protests, is part of the four "de-escalation zones" agreed on earlier this month during ceasefire talks in Astana, Kazakhstan.
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