Backed by USA air strikes, the Kurdish Arab Alliance has managed to push away the last ISIS militants away from the city, finally allowing its people to enjoy basic human rights that were denied them for so long. 6, 2016, by supporters of the Islamic State militant group on an anonymous photo sharing website, shows a member of Islamic State militants fires a Grad missile to shell towards Kurdish-led forces in Manbij, in Aleppo province, Syria.
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Under the extremists’ rule, women had to wear long black cloaks that covered all but their eyes, while all adult men were forced to grow beards.
A Kurdish source said: ‘The battle was very hard.
In an offensive that took 73 days, a coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters, with the help of US airstrikes, took control of the city just south of the Turkish border on Friday.
Earlier the alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters grouped in the SDF said Friday’s operation was “the last operation and the last assault”.
ISLAMABAD Daesh said on Friday it was behind a roadside bomb that injured 13 in the Pakistani city of Quetta, the SITE Intelligence Group said, days after a major attack in the city killed 73.
“Among the civilians taken by IS there were people used as human shields but also many who chose voluntarily to leave the town due to fear of reprisals” by the SDF, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
US officials have said once the Manbij operation was complete, it would create the conditions to move on the militant group’s de facto capital of Raqqa.
Jubilant scenes greeted the end of weeks of battles as men, women and children poured into streets now controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Syrian Arab Coalition (SAC).
IS has also booby-trapped cars and carried out suicide bombings to slow advances by their opponents.
“While withdrawing from a district of Manbij, DAESH jihadists abducted around 2,000 civilians from Al-Sirb neighbourhood”, said Sherfan Darwish, spokesman for the Manbij Military Council, a key component of the SDF. Because of its proximity to the Turkish border, Manbij was a crucial route for supplies and the transfer of foreign fighters in and out of Europe.
The Islamic State group’s loss of Manbij followed two months after they lost the Iraqi city of Fallujah.
The SDF launched its offensive in late May to capture Manbij under the cover of air strikes of the US-led coalition.
IS fighters have left behind hundreds of mines and booby traps in the town.
Syria’s conflict erupted in March 2011.
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In Aleppo, the observatory said at least 20 people were killed on Friday in Syrian and Russian air raids on rebel positions.
