BEIRUT (AP) – On the streets of Manbij, men chanted slogans against the Islamic State group or clipped their beards and women walked with their faces uncovered for the first time in over two-and-a-half years, hours after the militant group was pushed out of the northern Syrian city.
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Since fighting for Manbij began, US-led strikes have taken out more than 50 of Daesh’s heavy weapons and destroyed more than 600 fortified fighting positions, Trowbridge said.
“While withdrawing from a district of Manbij, Daesh jihadists abducted around 2,000 civilians from al-Sirb neighborhood”, said Sherfan Darwish, a spokesman for the Manbij Military Council (MMC), calling the militant group by its Arabic acronym.
“There are no more IS fighters” left in Manbij, an SDF member said.
Asked about the USA promise to Turkey that PYD – a group Ankara does not recognize as a legitimate Syrian opposition – would leave the area after Manbij’s liberation, Trowbridge said Washington certainly understood Turkey’s sensitivities regarding the issue.
On another front, at least 22 civilians were killed in air strikes carried out by the regime and its Russian ally in the northwestern province of Idlib, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The capture of Manbij bolsters the position of Kurds who already control an uninterrupted 400 km stretch of Syria’s northern border with Turkey.
Manbij “is under full control”, said Nasser Haj Mansour of the predominantly Kurdish Syria Democratic Forces. Pentagon deputy press secretary Gordon Trowbridge said Friday that IS “is clearly on the ropes”.
– “Human shields” -The EU denounced the use of civilians as human shields, saying in a statement that “Daesh (IS) continues to pose a threat to the people of Syria, Iraq, the region as well as to Europe and beyond”.
“There are also more troubling reports that as they were leaving, ISIL took with them civilians, using them as human shields” so as not to be attacked. Darwish said the SDF rescued 2,500 civilians, who were held captive by Daesh.
Here is a look at the IS group’s recent territorial setbacks.
Since then, US officials said they have liberated 1,000 square kilometers of Syrian territory from IS control, while destroying more than 50 IS heavy weapons, 600 fortified fighting positions and more than 150 IS battle vehicles.
But it’s positioning, close to the Euphrates River in the north, has made it a key supply route stop between Turkey and Raqqa, the Syrian city ISIL considers the capital of its so-called caliphate.
“The battle was very hard”, a Kurdish source said.
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The air raids hit the only hospital for women and children in the town of Kafr Hamra, killing two staffers, including a nurse, while 10 people were rescued from the rubble, the Syrian Civil Defense said.
