The loss of the town is a major blow to the Islamic State because the group’s supply route from Raqqa, its de facto capital, and Turkey, is essentially cut off. Gordon Trowbridge, the Pentagon deputy spokesman, called Manbij’s loss “a major setback for” ISIS. They were happy to return to their hometown. Since late June they have managed to expel the extremist group out of Manbij from a few at a time. She had been trapped in her basement for a week with her two daughters and father after the Islamic State threatened to kill anyone who tried to escape the city. Residents of Manbij, Syria, who had lived under the Islamic State for almost two years, came out onto the streets and celebrated, shedding tears of joy.
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“There are no more IS fighters” left in Manbij, an SDF member said.
Among those killed was the top Kurdish commander, known as Abu Layla, who died June 5, days after he was wounded during the campaign.
ISIS controls large parts of Deir Ezzor city and most of oil-rich Deir Ezzor province in the east of the country, and has battled Syrian regime forces for control of a key military airbase there.
In response to the escalated assault on Aleppo’s west side, rebels and opposition activists say, Assad’s forces have responded with intensified bombings that struck hospitals and involved munitions containing chlorine gas, a choking agent. But, since the recent coup attempt on Turkish president Erdogan by a faction of the armed forces who claimed Turkey would be liberated from his rule, he has accused cleric Fethullah Gulen, who now resides in the United States, of the attempt and is demanding his extradition. “Among the civilians taken by IS there were people used as human shields but also many who chose voluntarily to leave the town due to fear of reprisals” by the SDF, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Sean MacFarland, the top U.S commander for the fight against the Islamic State, said that about 45000 extremist militants have been driven out from the battlefield in Syria and that the number of militants from ISIS has been reduced to 15000. On Friday, the US military said it had killed the man it identified as the head of the Islamic State in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Hafiz Saeed Khan, in an airstrike on July 26 in Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan.
The group said it had seen a letter from SDF forces threatening to push further into IS territory if militants did not agree to free the captured civilians in exchange for IS prisoners.
The United States backs the SDF with airstrikes as well as arms and military training. It had fallen in 2014 to ISIS.
Its fall would mark the effective defeat of ISIS in Iraq, according to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who has said he aims to retake the city this year. The city was practically destroyed.
Like other territories in the so-called Islamic State, it was the scene of brutal repression, massacres and gruesome executions including one described by a female British jihadist, Khadijah Dare.
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Hundreds of cars and vehicles carrying families and their belongings flocked into the city from makeshift camps and villages in the countryside, where numerous city’s residents took shelter during the two-month campaign, according to an SDF official and relatives who were in contact with residents.
