“While withdrawing from a district of Manbij, Daesh (Isis) jihadists abducted around 2,000 civilians from Al-Sirb neighbourhood”, said Sherfan Darwish, spokesman for the Manbij Military Council, a key component of the SDF.
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The retreat from the city, which IS captured in 2014, marked the jihadists’ worst defeat yet at the hands of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an Arab-Kurdish alliance supported by U.S. air strikes.
Now, this is a significant loss for the Islamic State, since the northern Syrian town of Manbij happens to be found on the supply route between the Turkish border and the de facto self-proclaimed caliphate capital, Raqqa. “They slaughtered us”, said a young man to ISIS as amateur videos relating stories in Manbij were posted in the social media.
It was not immediately clear how many jihadists fled from the town, but reports last week after the SDF forces took Manbij said that dozens of IS fighters were holed up in the “security quarter”.
Manbij “is under full control”, said Nasser Haj Mansour of the predominantly Kurdish Syria Democratic Forces.
Since May 21, the SDF has liberated more than 1,000 square kilometers of territory from ISIS and taken out more than 600 fortified fighting positions, Trowbridge said.
Defeating the terrorist group in Manbij was important as it essentially blocks a supply route IS has between its heartland of Raqqa and Turkey. “The city is now under our full control”, said a senior level rebel official.
Despite intensive US bombing of bridges, several hospitals and a large silo in the course of the campaign, the city appears to have been spared the devastation of other cities in the Syrian conflict.
But the job of clearing the city will be complicated after the jihadists left behind hundreds of mines and booby traps, he added.
A woman smokes as she rests after she was evacuated with others by the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters from an ISIS-controlled Manbij, Syria, Aug. 12, 2016.
IS still controls large areas of Syria as well as Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul.
For weeks, SDF fighters have been slowly advancing in the town and nearby villages over the past weeks.
More than 1,000 IS fighters were killed in the offensive, according to the Observatory, as well as around 300 SDF fighters. The fighting and the airstrikes have killed some 450 people, according to the Observatory.
Thousands of displaced residents streamed back into the northern Syrian town of Manbij on Saturday after US -backed fighters ousted the last Islamic State (IS) militants from their former stronghold, residents and USA allies said. The United Nations has said more than 78,000 people have been displaced since then.
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In nearby Aleppo, a convoy of 40 lorries delivered almost 1,000 tons of food to the government-held west of the city, where an insurgent counteroffensive has cut the main supply route.
