The Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), with air support from a USA -led coalition, said last week they had taken nearly complete control of Manbij, where a small number of IS fighters had been holed up.
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More than 78,000 people there have been displaced from the city, which is considered strategically important due to its location on the supply route from the de facto capital of the so-called Islamic State, Raqqa, and the Turkish border.
According to the SDF-led Manbij Military Council, they have saved so far 170,000 civilians trapped in the city from ISIS.
Fleeing fighters took around 2,000 civilians, including women and children, on Friday to ward off air strikes as they headed to the IS-held frontier town of Jarabulus, according to the SDF.
Darwish said the SDF rescued 2,500 civilians who were held captive by IS fighters before they fled and combed Al-Sirb on Friday for any remaining jihadists.
Ecstatic jubilation engulfed the northern Syrian city as women were seen ripping off their burqas, burning them and smoking, while men cut off their beards as they all rejoiced at their newly obtained freedom from the ferocious Islamic death cult, ISIS. “They slaughtered us”, a young man shouted in a Manbij square.
But Trowbridge noted that there were “still pockets of opposition” in the Manbij’s north, but that ISIS was “clearly on the ropes”.
A Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) fighter comforts a civilian who was evacuated with others by the SDF from an Islamic State-controlled neighbourhood of Manbij, in Aleppo Governorate, Syria, August 12, 2016.
Darwish said roughly 100 Islamic State fighters were left in the centre of the city, and that they were using civilians as human shields.
Kozak said that although the SDF forces in Syria consisted of an estimated 2,500 Arabs and just 500 Kurds, they still relied on the Kurds for command and logistics.
On Thursday, SDF forces stormed one of the streets in which IS militants have shielded themselves with residents, freeing hundreds after brief clashes and leaving the militants holed up in an ever-smaller corner of the northern district of Sarab. The Sunni city was an insurgent stronghold following the 2003 US -led invasion, and more than 100 American soldiers were killed in house-by-house fighting there in 2004. “The city is now fully under our control”, SDF spokesman Sharvan Darwesh said on his Facebook page Saturday.
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Woman and children are pictures laughing, and crying tears of joy, after U.S backed forces seized full control of the city which was infiltrated by the extremist militants since 2014.
