ISIS execution site in Raqqa is captured by US-led forces

An infamous public square where ISIS militants carried out beheadings has been captured by US-led forces with the terror group fleeing Raqqa.

Officials in Syria say the jihadists’ so-called capital has finally been liberated after a bloody battle to recapture Al-Naim (Paradise) Square.

The site had become synonymous with the group’s reign of terror and was used to carry out public executions.

Residents were forced to watch after being summoned them loudspeakers while bodies and severed heads would be left there for days, mounted on posts.

An infamous public square where ISIS militants carried out beheadings has been captured by US-led forces with the terror group fleeing Raqqa. This picture is believed to show a man being executed in the square in 2015

Syrian Democratic Forces launched an operation to retake the last ISIS-held pocket of the city after some 275 militants and their family members surrendered over the weekend. SDF soldiers are pictured this week in Al-Naim square where ISIS once carried out brutal executions

Officials in Syria say they the jihadists’ so-called capital has been liberated after a bloody battle to recapture Al-Naim (Paradise) Square. The square is shown this week after the area was liberated

Witnesses described how the bodies of those executed would be labelled, each with his or her perceived crime, for the public to see.

The square previously known for its famous ice cream shop was quickly renamed from Paradise to Hell (Jahim) Square.

A senior Kurdish commander in the city said the Syrian Democratic Forces that fought to recapture the area have not yet seen what the group left behind in the square but called its capture symbolic. 

‘The group showed off its might in this square. Now it is broken and is chased out of the heart of its alleged capital,’ the commander said.

He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

SDF fighters launched an operation to retake the last ISIS-held pocket of the city after some 275 militants and their family members surrendered over the weekend. 

Raqqa fell to ISIS in 2014 and became the de facto capital of their self-styled caliphate. 

This morning, a commander said the had been liberated and that combing operations are underway to clear the city of land mines and extremist sleeper cells.

Witnesses described how the bodies of those executed would be labelled in the square (pictured), each with his or her perceived crime, for the public to see

Brigadier General Talal Sillo said that there are no longer clashes going on in the city.

Sillo says a formal declaration will follow befitting ‘the fall of the capital of terrorism.’

Dozens of militants who refused to surrender had made their last stand in the city’s stadium, which had become notorious as a prison and dungeons for the group.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the ISIS militants are still holed up inside the stadium.

There were also reports this morning that Kurdish-led forces have captured the city hospital in Raqqa, which served as an ISIS headquarters.

The facility was one of the militants’ last holdouts in Raqqa and had doubled as a hospital and an ISIS command center. 

Musafa Bali, a spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces, says 22 IS militants were killed in the advance on the hospital. 

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