The kidnappings took place in villages near the Islamic State-controlled town of al-Bab in the north-east of Aleppo province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights added.
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The militants transferred some 350 of those abducted to al-Raqqa, the de facto capital of Islamic State in Syria, he said.
“So there is still a civilian population, there are Daesh in defensive areas and the Syrian Democratic Forces are moving closer to them”, said British Army Major General Doug Chalmers, deputy commander for strategy and sustainment with the US -led coalition, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group. SDF spokesman Sherfan Darwish told The Associated Press that the seizure of over 900 is in retaliation for the SDF offensive on the town of Manbij.
“Whenever Daesh is defeated, they retaliate against civilians”, Darwish said.
Others were forced to dig trenches or jailed. Most were later released.
In February previous year, IS abducted almost 200 Christians from Syria’s north-east. They were released after millions of dollars in ransom money had been collected for them.
“The SDF entered Manbij from the south under cover of coalition air raids”, said the Observatory’s chief Rami Abdel Rahman, whose Britain-based group relies on a broad network of sources inside Syria to monitor the country’s conflict.
The Syrian troops have captured dozens of villages and farms near the town and now have Manbij surrounded.
Minbij, under Islamic State’s rule since 2014, is strategically important because of its location along a supply route from the Turkish border to al-Raqqa. If Manbij is captured, it will be the biggest strategic defeat for IS in Syria since July 2015, when it lost the border town of Tal Abyad.
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Eighty-one Syrian government fighters and 463 extremists are reported to have been killed in the fighting.
