US -backed fighters in Syria on Thursday closed off all major roads leading to the northern Syrian town of Manbij, a stronghold of the Islamic State group, and surrounded it from three sides, officials and opposition activists said. If the US -backed Syria Democratic Forces capture Manbij, it will be the biggest strategic defeat for IS in Syria since July 2015, when it lost the border town of Tal Abyad, a major supply route to the militants’ de facto capital of Raqqa.
Advertisement
He also commended the “progress being made by Iraqi forces on the battlefield” in the city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, where the US -led coalition has been supporting Iraqi forces in the campaign to rout IS militants from their stronghold.
The operation to seize Manbij is part of a bid to take control of a 60-mile stretch of territory along the Syria-Turkey border through which Islamic State funnels foreign fighters.
According to U.S. Central Command, Arab fighters have captured 344 square kilometers (213 square miles) of territory from the militant group in Manbij since last week and the U.S. -led coalition has supported the group with 105 airstrikes.
In another development on Thursday, the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Syrian forces have surrounded Manbij from the north, east and south. The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of activists and medical sources inside Syria, said that 132 IS militants and 21 SDF fighters had been killed since the start of the offensive.
The assault on Manbij began last week, led by the SDF’s Syrian-Arab fighters.
With thousands of people already uprooted from their homes by fighting around Manbij, the United Nations has said the number eventually could exceed 215,000.
Civilians in the city and surrounding countryside were fleeing the fighting, the Observatory added.
There was no immediate comment from the SDF.
“Daesh is preparing for a battle inside the city”, Bali said using an Arabic acronym to refer to IS. “When the time comes we will enter it of course”, he said.
The Associated Press reported that the French special forces are offering training and advice to fighters in northern Syria, quoting an unnamed official. An online statement from the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for two suicide attacks in Iraq – one that killed 19 people and wounded 46 in a mostly Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad and another that killed 12 people and wounded 32 in the town of Taji, north of the capital.
A media official with forces allied to the United Nations -brokered government in Libya says Islamic State group militants are being cornered inside their headquarters, a conference center in the central Libyan town of Sirte.
Advertisement
One New Syrian Army fighter, a defector from Bashar al-Assad’s Special Forces, told the Times that British troops had come from Jordan to help build defences. It is a key waypoint on a IS supply line between the Turkish border and the extremist group’s de facto capital, Raqqa.
