blow to france, the terrorist attacks here. i m not convinced it will be entirely successful or we can take out raqqa purely with air strikes. so two crucial follow-ups to that. when you talk about hospitals being struck as they are saying indeed happened now. those hospitals are often only in name. names. but as you point out, sometimes and sometimes not. how do you know? we don t know actually. we don t know what s going inside raqqa. we have very little information. sometimes they will move civilians into places like that, like during the kos vo air strikes, they might move hostages or civilians into areas they think will be targeted. my concern is for civilians. so i think that it s very complicated launching air strikes like this as a
administration is being based and importantly a lot of foreign fighters especially those from britain and france are based in and around raqqa. it is known that a lot of the executions that were carried out by jihadi john were carried out on the outskirts 67 raqqa. it is full of important targets and does make sense to go for raqqa than for other places. and nick paton walsh, you have more information. i m just hearing that right now. go ahead. no, simply to add, we have to be cautious about the level of assault that s possible against raqqa. we re talking about a very still well populated city that has been at the heart of the isis way of life for a number of time. we re talking about a place where there s talk of blankets
the middle east editor of newsweek, lives here in paris, author of an upcoming book on syria. you have spent a lot of time in syria and in recent months and during this conflict. so let s talk about this issue right now, tonight, france with massive air strikes against the stronghold of raqqa. in syria, what is your perception of the civilians and isis and how closely intertwined they are? it s difficult with air strikes to get precise targets. we ve seen this over and over again. i think since the russian intervention began there s been something like 14 hospitals that have been hit. they mainly hit civilian targets rather than or moderate syrian opposition targets rather than isis targets. so while i understand why these air strikes have to happen, france has been pierced at its heart it s been an incredible
it is possible that you have a training camp, recruitment center and arms depot in raqqa still left for the french to hit in one night, what the heck was the united states and coalition doing up to this point? it s a fair question. these are difficult targets, raqqa is a heavily populated city, that s one reason isis is there, because the u.s. and coalition partners don t want to have collateral damage. they hide in plain sight in effect. isis does have an organization and needs stuff. it needs weapons and needs places for their leaders to hide, et cetera. they are moving around as best they can. we don t know what led specifically to those sites, what does the u.s. and five eyes program know about those particular sites? we know that based on practice they are not always 100% sure. it s their best guess as to what is there. the french acting on what is the best western intelligence.
is this part of a broader french strategy? i doubt that, that s going to take a large amount of planning to implement. it s like a visceral understandable reaction. but are we also going to see amongst nato and those who meant and attacked here today, something slightly more cohesive and serious against isis and raqqa. it s not the entirety of where they are but it is an important place to strike at a time like this, erin. nick, thank u. 20 bombs dropped and 10 fighter jets led by the french. perhaps the punch in the face, the reaction that france is now responding with. there will be so much more to come to actually defeat this opponent. we ll take a brief break and we re live from paris.