BEIRUT — Islamic State militants are stiffening their defenses for a possible assault on their de facto capital Raqqa as international airstrikes intensify on the Syrian city in retaliation for the Paris attacks. The fighters are hiding in civilian neighborhoods and preventing anyone from fleeing, activists said. Activists from Raqqa say the northern Syrian city's estimated 350,000 residents are gripped by fear, rattled by powerful Russian and French airstrikes that shake the city daily and worried they would be trapped with nowhere to go amid signs of a looming ground invasion by U.S.-allied Kurdish and Arab forces in Syria. For months, those forces have been advancing gradually toward...
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