Video | Meet the women warriors who drove Islamic State from in Raqqa – and have vowed to keep fighting

A Kurdish female militia that took a lead role in freeing the northern Syrian city of Raqqa from the Islamic State group said on Thursday it will continue the fight to liberate women from the extremists’ brutal rule.

In a highly symbolic gesture, Nisreen Abdullah of the Women’s Protection Units, or YPJ, made the statement in Raqqa’s Paradise Square – the same place where IS fighters once carried out public killings.

She said the all-women force, which is part of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) battling IS, lost 30 fighters in the four-month battle to liberate Raqqa.

Under the rule of the Islamic State group, women were forced to wear all-encompassing veils and could be stoned to death for adultery. Hundreds of women and girls from Iraq’s Yazidi minority were captured and forced into sexual slavery.

Raqqa was centre-stage of IS’ brutality, the de facto capital of the militants self-proclaimed “caliphate.”

“We have achieved our goal, which was to pound the strongholds of terrorism in its capital, liberate women and restore honour to Yazidi women by liberating dozens of slaves,” Abdullah said.

The SDF, a coalition of several factions including the YPJ, said on Tuesday that military operations in Raqqa have ended and that their fighters have taken full control of the city.