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”.
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Nasser Haj Mansour, of the predominantly Kurdish Syria Democratic Forces, said Manbij “is under full control”, but added that search operations were continuing to find any extremists who might be hiding in the city.
The SDF, formed previous year by recruiting Arabs to join forces with the powerful YPG Kurdish militia, launched an offensive with the support of USA -led strikes at the end of May to remove IS from areas it controls along the Turkish border.
Manbij was an IS hub and a main point linking the self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq with the rest of the world.
US -backed fighters liberated a strategic Syrian city from the Islamic State over the weekend, bringing the rebels a step closer to the terrorist group’s de facto capital of Raqqa and cutting off a route used by the militants. When IS overran the town in 2014, the extremists killed and enslaved thousands of members of Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority. We provided food to some of the civilians and took them to safety. The Islamic State imposes an extreme version of Islam on the territory under its control, including a mandatory dress code.
Men jubilantly had their beards cut off as women ripped off their veils and set them on fire in an act of rebellion after years living under Isis’ brutal interpretation of Sharia law.
The operation to retake Mosul that started yesterday is part of the preparations for an offensive on the city itself, said a Kurdish official who declined to be identified. During the offensive, the Syria Democratic Forces had offered militants a safe route to leave the town but they refused.
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.
Mr Willits said that while capturing Manbij was a “huge blow to Isis” because major supply routes had been cut off, it could be premature to discuss their impending defeat.
But the job of clearing the city will be hard after the terrorist left behind hundreds of mines and booby traps, he added.
With air support from the US-led coalition, the SDF began its assault on Manbij on May 31, surging into the town itself three weeks later. It is also the largest city the group has lost in Syria.
The Observatory reported that 437 civilians, including more than 100 children, were killed in the battle for Manbij and surrounding territory.
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Among those killed was the top Kurdish commander, known as Abu Layla, who died June 5, days after he was wounded during the campaign.
