Dozens of civilians, including children and women from Manbij who had fled the city at the height of the aerial strikes, were killed in suspected USA coalition air strikes last month, residents and monitors said.
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The women ripped off their black burqas and smoked cigarettes, while men cut their beards and flashed the peace sign, according to The Telegraph.
The Syrian Democratic Forces are preparing to defend the city against Islamic State counterattacks, Ahmad Hisso Araj, a spokesman for the force, said Sunday, two days after capturing Manbij.
Kurdish control of Manbij would certainly hurt relations with the USA -led coalition as there is some remote involvement with Turkey as they border the newly liberated city, who have a rocky relationship with the Kurds.
Uniting the cantons would give the Syrian Kurds an uninterrupted stretch of territory along the Turkish border, a prospect the Syrian regime and Russian Federation may welcome as it would also weaken rebel groups they are fighting.
Manbij was one of just two crossings to Turkey from Syria, and its fall will probably deprive the extremists of that route.
Then came crowds of men, women and children, returning on foot from the countryside, where they took refuge while fighters from the Syria Democratic Forces fought to liberate the once-tranquil city.
As they fled, the jihadists took hundreds of civilians with them to use as “human shields” but later released many of them.
In Iraq, Islamic State lost Fallujah in June and Ramadi a few months earlier.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab forces backed by the United States, has battled to take control of Manbij in northern Syria since May and hundreds have been freed in this latest mission, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. US officials anticipate a tough battle.
ISIL controls large parts of Deir Ezzor and most of the oil-rich eastern province of the same name – part of the swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq that it seized in mid-2014.
Rebels and government forces also clashed Saturday in the city, where more than 200 civilians have been killed since a rebel offensive began on July 31, the observatory said.
On Saturday Germany’s foreign minister said aid was desperately needed in Aleppo and that it may be necessary to start an “air bridge” to bring it in. The Observatory said 200 of those were killed in air strikes by the US-led coalition.
Iranian forces have been providing support to Assad in the civil war.
Since the battle for Manbij began, US-led strikes have destroyed more than 50 IS heavy weapons and more than 600 fortified fighting positions, Trowbridge said. “They’re fighting pretty hard in that city”.
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Information for this article was contributed by Bassem Mroue and staff members of The Associated Press; by Louisa Loveluck, Hugh Naylor and Zakaria Zakaria of The Washington Post; and by Rod Nordland, Maher Samaan and Eric Schmitt of The New York Times.
