three air strikes southerly hit just nearby and the french said they'd started bombing. we'll do our best to avenge paris. he, like the other young kurdish fighters here, have lost friends, but say fighting isis is a duty for humanity rather than vengeance, as they man a series of trenches and outposts about 20 miles from the city. we have just heard the distant thuds of what could have been two air strikes, but from where we're standing, here is the kurdish front line, a trench dug, as far as we can see, and then all in this direction, flat, open land, until you reach the outskirts of raqqah, the capital of isis' self-declared caliphate. >> reporter: four russian missiles hit raqqah this day, activists say, but otherwise, it's the silence of stalemate in the desert. weapons here are scant. this man carries the ak-47 of his friend, who died eight months ago. out here in the flat, open ground, with isis in the next village, they still scorn isis'