Islamic State fighters have used the northern Syrian city of Manbij as a base to hatch plots against Europe, Turkey and the United States.
Advertisement
That is seen as important to North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member Turkey, which has opposed any further expansion of Syrian Kurdish sway at the frontier.
“It’s significant in that it’s their last remaining funnel” to Europe, a US military official told Reuters.
“Oh fearless people of Manbij, our forces are coming to liberate you from the shackles of the Daesh terrorist torturers”, said the statement, using an acronym for Islamic State also known as ISIS or ISIL.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on June 1 that the Kurdish and Syrian Arab troops seized control of 16 villages and were about 15 kilometers from Manbij.
The SDF announced an offensive against Isis territories in nearby Raqqa province last week but has so far pushed west rather than south, where the group’s de-facto capital lies.
Turkey’s state-run news agency says airstrikes and Turkish artillery fire against the Islamic State group in Syria have killed 14 militants.
The SDF has emerged as a key ally of the US-led anti-IS coalition over the past two years, leading the fight against the militants on the ground in northern Syria.
Turkey has voiced concerns about separatist motivations of the PYD terrorist organization and its military wing, the YPG, as wells as their link to PKK terrorists.
Approximately 140 Islamic State terrorists, including 14 suicide auto bombers, were killed in the operation while the Peshmerga forces lost only four fighters.
The US had been preparing for the offensive for several weeks to capture Manbij area along the Syria-Turkey border from Isis, US officials told Reuters.
An American fighter, battling alongside the Syrian Democratic Forces, holds a US flag as he stands with SDF members in the northern province of Raqqa, Syria, May 27, 2016. “So you’ll have Syrian Arabs occupying traditional Syrian Arab land”, the official said, adding Turkey supported the offensive.
Dislodging Islamic State fighters from Manbij appears to be part of a broader plan to clear Islamic State from a 60-mile stretch of the Turkey-Syria border that has served as a corridor for foreign fighters entering and leaving Syria.
Kurdish forces have been present just west of the river for months, but, largely because of Turkish objections, they have refrained from advances, according to Kurdish officials.
U.S. President Barack Obama has authorized about 300 U.S. special operations forces to operate on the ground inside Syria to help coordinate with local forces. “We have bitten the bullet on the Kurds”, said the USA official.
Falluja is ISIS’s closest bastion to Baghdad, and is the base from which the group has plotted suicide bombings against civilians and government targets inside the capital.
Advertisement
The U.N. children’s fund has issued a stark warning to Iraqi troops and Islamic State militants to spare the children amid a battle to retake the city of Fallujah city.
