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BEIRUT / AP
The IS group ordered residents to evacuate the Syrian city of Raqqa on Sunday following reports that a dam contested by US-backed forces upstream on the Euphrates River could collapse, activists reported. The militants said coalition airstrikes had weakened the Tabqa Dam, some 40 kilometers west of Raqqa, and that the water level behind the dam was rising. The extremists captured the city from Syrian rebels in 2014 and it now serves as the capital of the group’s so called Islamic caliphate.
Civilians began fleeing midday, according to the activist-run Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-run monitoring group, on Sunday reported that the IS-held dam was out of service for unknown reasons.