US and allies prepare to take Raqqa from Isis as battle for Mosul continues

Before Iraqi forces and their US backers have set foot in Mosul, the US and its allies have begun preparations to imminently wrest the Syrian city of Raqqa from the Islamic State, a momentous decision aimed at destroying what is left of Isis’s self-declared caliphate.
The US defense chief, Ashton Carter, meeting in Paris with his counterparts in the anti-Isis coalition, vowed that Iraqi forces, Syrian Arab and Kurdish allies and US special operations troops and airpower could take away Isis’s Iraqi and Syrian capitals practically simultaneously.
“We’ve planned for that, and we have the resources for both,” Carter told NBC News early Wednesday, saying an attack on Raqqa would commence "in the next few weeks"