US-backed fighters said Tuesday that major military operations in Raqqa are over, marking a significant moment for the war on ISIS – and in some ways, its end.

The Syrian city of Raqqa is blanketed in despair. Residents survive in a wasteland of war-warped buildings and shattered concrete. They sleep exposed to the elements in homes with blown-out walls.

Thousands of people fled from the area amid the dramatic escalation in the civil war, which had simmered without major advances by either side for years.

Inside a formerly ISIS-occupied building in the western suburbs of Raqqa, Syria Drugs found inside possibly shed light on the level of pressure militants faced.

(PHOTOS: Syria’s Slow-Motion Civil War) “It has been difficult being so close to our land and seeing others on it,” Ghanem said. Dressed in a crisply ironed beige galabiya (an ankle-length ...

Before the start of the civil war in Syria, the provincial capital was believed to have a population of 220,000.

The rise of ISIS was sparked when its former incarnation, the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq, or ISI, laid low before capitalizing on the Syrian civil war and a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

For nearly four years, the Islamic State terrorized the residents of Raqqa. But the US-led coalition airstrikes destroyed the city.