A US -backed coalition of Syrian fighters, fresh from driving Islamic State extremists from a key northern city, says it will now target another IS-held town near the Turkish border.
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Al Jazeera’s Reza Sayah, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkish side of the Syria-Turkey border, said the loss of Manbij “appears to be a major setback for ISIL and a major achievement for all the forces battling the group in Syria”.
“The city is now fully under our control but we are undertaking sweeping operations”, Sharfan Darwish of the SDF-allied Manbij Military Council told Reuters, adding that militant sleeper cells in the city continued to be a source of concern.
Fleeing jihadists took around 2,000 civilians, including women and children, on Friday to ward off air strikes as they headed to the IS-held frontier town of Jarabulus, according to the SDF.
Some of the hostages ISIL took when fleeing Manbij have now been released. It progressed slowly after the terror group used civilians as human shields, forcing forces to go house-to-house to clear them.
On Wednesday, the Libyan city of Sirte, held by ISIS for more than a year, also fell to pro-government militiamen, and the militants lost the headquarters from which they had ruled more than 150 miles of Libyan coastline. “They would execute people for anything, using the excuse he did not believe”, a man said pointing out to an area described as an ISIS execution site.
The US-backed forces were meanwhile combing Al-Sirb on Friday for jihadists who could still be in the neighbourhood, he added. After being assaulted not only by the SDF but US-led coalition forces, the militants here have been making numerous blunders during their operations – including having 83 oil tankers out in the open for an easy airstrike.
SDF fighters had been slowly advancing on the town and nearby villages for weeks. “When he removed it there was an explosion and he was killed”, this source said.
“The award was given to his parents”, Kokov said.
The United Nations has said that more than 78,000 people have been displaced since then.
The SDF launched an assault in May on Manbij, on a key jihadist supply route between the Turkish border and IS’s de facto Syrian capital Raqa. The US-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting in Manbij claimed more than 1700 lives including more than 400 civilians. The SDF has said Islamic State was using civilians as human shields.
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More than 290,000 people have died in the conflict in Syria since March 2011.
