Backed by coalition airstrikes, the Syria Democratic Forces – an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias – said that they controlled all roads east, north and south of Manbij and that the remaining road to Raqqa, the jihadists’ capital, was within “firing range”.
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A US-backed Kurdish and Arab alliance is set to attack an Islamic State-held city in northern Syria within days, a military spokesman said, helping clear the way for an eventual assault on the jihadists’ stronghold of Raqa.
The Syrian Democratic Forces supported by United States air strikes encircled Manbij on Friday, severing the jihadist group’s principal supply route between Turkey and its de facto Syrian capital, Raqqa city.
The anti-IS offensives posed a significant challenge to the extremist group as it tries to stave off multiple attacks across parts of Syria and Iraq, where it declared a so-called caliphate in 2014, and in more recently seized territory in chaotic Libya. The SDF said its fighters were close enough to Manbij to be able to fire on IS militants.
The first wave of 250 additional US special operations forces have started arriving in northern Syria to help train and assist local Syrian Democratic Forces as they battle ISIS, CNN has learned.
In neighbouring Iraq, government troops also fought for territory in an Islamic State bastion near Baghdad.
The SDF had advanced to the outskirts of Manbij but had held back from entering to limit harm to civilians, a spokesman for the SDF-allied Manbij Military Council said.
The Observatory said almost 160 Daesh terrorists had died in battles with the SDF around Manbij and more than 20 SDF fighters had been killed.
The U.S. Central Command said that since the start of their offensive to liberate Manbij, SDF’s Syrian Arab Coalition freed a total of 344 square kilometers from IS control.
The shrine, around 10 kilometres (six miles) south of the centre of Damascus, is heavily guarded by pro-government forces but has still been the target of several jihadist attacks.
The two conflicts have increasingly overlapped, both politically and geographically, in a relatively small area of real estate north of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.
The Observatory also said warplanes from a US-led coalition have been conducting heavy bombing raids on the town and its surroundings.
Assad and Russian Federation have said the anti-Assad opposition, al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State are indistinguishable “terrorist” groups.
“We have reached the road that links Manbij and Aleppo, from the west”.
A convoy of trucks carrying food arrived in Daraya late Thursday, delivering rice, lentils, sugar, oil and wheat flour to civilians for the first time since the regime laid siege to the town in late 2012.
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“Our forces are now cleaning up the district from the roadside bombs and booby-trapped houses, and then we will hand it over to the police forces to hold the ground”, Numani said.
