After months of fighting, the Syrian Democratic Forces captured Manbij, an Islamic State stronghold since 2014 and a critical supply line to the nearby Turkish border that the extremist group had used to smuggle goods and fighters. Men trimmed their ISIS-mandated beards, while one woman burned her niqab.
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But while the USA and its allies prepare for that tough battle, resident of Manbij will likely return to a state of relative normalcy that existed before ISIS captured the town.
It took more than two months for the Kurdish and Arab fighters of the SDF to win the battle for Manbij, with heavy support from the US-led coalition.
They were heading northeast towards Jarablus, a town under ISIL control on the Turkish border, the Observatory said.
In addition, the SDF lost almost 300 of its fighters, while more than 1,000 jihadists were killed.
IS has used humans as shields in an effort to deter air strikes. “The city is now fully under our control”, SDF spokesman Sharvan Darwesh said on his Facebook page Saturday. They killed us while we were still alive.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) coalition includes the powerful Kurdish YPG militia.
According to the Observatory, the fighting and the airstrikes have killed 1,756 people, including 438 civilians, 299 SDF fighters and 1,019 militants since the Manbij offensive began in late May.
On Thursday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry backed a United Nations proposal to bring aid into terrorist-occupied east Aleppo through army lines under “joint control”.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitor, reported that several hundred of the civilians taken from the city were no longer being held by IS.
The Islamic State group has repeatedly used civilians as human shields, booby-trapped cars and carried out suicide bombings to slow advances by their opponents and avoid coming under attack.
The people of Manbij were suffocated by the tyranny of the Islamic State (ISIS) for two years, up until now.
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Although divided since 2012, the western districts held by Syrian President Bashar Assad have not experienced the severe deprivations of areas in the east that rebel forces control. USA military special ground forces took a substantial part in this campaign, making it the US-backed rebels’ most ambitious operation since the war against ISIS began in Syria two years ago. Syria’s conflict erupted in March 2011 and has since killed more than 290,000 people and drawn in world powers on all sides of the war.
