Scenes of tearful relief and joy emerged on Saturday from the northern Syrian city of Manbij, as residents celebrated their liberation from two years of Islamic State rule after US-backed Kurdish and Arab fighters ousted the group’s fighters following a months-long siege.
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The U.S. -backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) declared Manbij fully liberated on August 12, saying they were “starting a new history after closing the book of darkness”.
On Friday, United States-backed forces succeeded in driving Islamic State militants from the town of Manbij, Syria, marking a pivotal victory in the war against the radical Islamic faction. Today is the first day life is returning to normal, ‘ said Sharfan Darwish, spokesman for the SDF-allied Manbij Military Council said, adding they were working to restore basic services.
Celebrations in solidarity with Manbij are also held in other cities across Syria, as these Twitter posts attest. Men overjoyed broke into tears, while a women was seen lighting up cigarette.an act which was prohibited under ISIS. Around 300 SDF fighters died, along with more than 1,000 extremists, it said.
“Our mission [now] is to remove the land mines and secure the areas, the liberated ones”, he said.
The Observatory reported that 437 civilians, including more than 100 children, were killed in the battle for Manbij and surrounding territory.
Families piled five deep on motorcycles. children exhausted and numb from the ordeal that included civilians being used as human shields.
Jubilant scenes greeted the end of weeks of battles as men, women and children poured into streets now controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Syrian Arab Coalition (SAC). But witnesses said numerous civilians had returned to the city in the hours after the extremists left.
The siege at Manbij, a key outpost on a jihadist supply route to the self-declared IS capital, Raqqa, ended Friday, when Islamic State forces abandoned the city after two months of fighting. Pentagon deputy press secretary Gordon Trowbridge said Friday that IS “is clearly on the ropes”.
Already, there has been a surge in attacks-either claimed or inspired by Islamic State-in several countries that are part of the USA -led global coalition fighting the extremist group in the Middle East. However, the Islamic State still controls large parts of Syria as well as Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul.
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Strikes by the Russian and Syrian air force continued despite a pledge by Moscow to observe a three-hour daily ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid deliveries.
