Forces launch final assault in Manbij

The coalition of militias fought 73 days to drive out IS and say they freed 2,000 civilians being used as human shields on the final day.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), with air support from a US-led coalition, said last week they had taken nearly complete control of the city.

“While withdrawing from a district of Manbij, Daesh jihadists abducted around 2,000 civilians from al-Sirb neighborhood”, said Manbij Military Council (MMC) spokesman Sherfan Darwish, calling the militant group by its Arabic acronym.

By June, the US-backed forces surrounded the city.

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights described that during ISIS’ retreat from Manbij to Jarabulus, a city on the Turkish border, the militants took ahold of their hostages in hopes to slow the SDF’s advances on what was once a major ISIS-held city.

The militant group shocked the world when it took control of large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq in 2014, including Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city.

With air support from the US-led coalition, the SDF began its assault on Manbij in late May, surging into the town itself three weeks later.

The UN said that more than 78,000 people had fled since then.

The Observatory, meanwhile, reported that 15 civilians were killed Friday in Syrian and Russian air raids on rebel positions in the divided city of Aleppo.

An AFP correspondent in the rebel-held east of the city said several neighbourhoods were hit, adding that people had been out on the streets to stock up on supplies.

The strikes come in the face of calls for a temporary humanitarian ceasefire.

An estimated 1.5 million people live in the city, including about 250,000 in rebel-held districts.