He added that searches are still being carried out for any extremists who might be hiding in the town.
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“Their spirits have been broken”, he said. The celebrations at Syrian city of Manbij were seen on Friday after the city got rid of militants, fighting them backed by United States rebel groups.
Another woman thanked the fighters that had set them free: “You are our children, you are our heroes, you are the blood of our hearts, you are our eyes”. Smoking was completely banned too.
“There is movement in the market and the celebrations are taking place in the public squares. People are driving their cars in the streets, hailing the SDF”, Mr. Araj said.
The Manbij operation, in which US special forces have played a significant role on the ground, marks the most ambitious advance by the Washington-allied SDF since the USA launched its military campaign against ISIS two years ago.
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.
ISIS had maintained full control of the tiny town since 2014, according to BuzzFeed. And Iraqi forces are planning for a major offensive expected by the end of this year to try to retake Islamic State’s stronghold of Mosul.
Manbij was an IS hub and a main point linking the self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq with the rest of the world.
Syria Democratic Forces fighters had been advancing on the town and nearby villages for weeks.
The Islamic State group’s loss of Manbij followed two months after they lost the Iraqi city of Fallujah.
The SDF captured Manbij last week, freeing thousands of captive civilians, but were battling the last remaining IS fighters holed up in the city in the days that followed.
“It has lost the center of Manbij, it has lost control of Manbij”, he said.
“While withdrawing from a district of Manbij, DAESH 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.
Syria’s state news agency Sana, quoting a military source, said the warplanes destroyed several rebel positions and vehicles and killed “dozens of terrorists”.
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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.
