IS frees hundreds of civilians in north Syria

Beirut / AFP

The IS group has freed hundreds of civilians used by the extremists as human shields while retreating in northern Syria, US-backed forces and a monitor said on Saturday.
A source from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which pushed IS out of the city of Manbij this week with the aid of US-led air strikes, said that some of the civilians were able to escape while “others were freed”.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitor, said that several hundred of the civilians taken were no longer held by IS.
The SDF, an Arab-Kurdish alliance, launched an assault in May on Manbij, on a key extremist supply route between the Turkish border and IS’s de facto Syrian capital Raqa.
IS extremists seized around 2,000 civilians as they fled Manbij on Friday, using them as protection against air strikes en route to the extremist-held town of Jarabulus, on the Turkish-Syrian border.
“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.
The extremists, who have suffered a string of losses in Syria and Iraq, have often staged mass abductions when they come under pressure to relinquish territory they hold.
IS has also booby-trapped cars and carried out suicide bombings to slow advances by their opponents.
According to the Observatory, 437 civilians, including more than 100 children, were killed in the battle for Manbij and surrounding territory.
Around 300 SDF fighters died, along with more than 1,000 extremists, it said.

‘IS on the ropes in northern Syria’

Washington / AFP

Coalition-supported local forces fighting the IS group in northern Syria have recaptured large areas around the city of Manbij and put the extremists’ “on the ropes,” a Pentagon official said.
Since the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) began an operation to capture Manbij on May 21, they have wrested control of more than 1,000 square kilometers (385 square miles) of territory from IS.
Manbij is a key town in the anti-IS struggle because the jihadists were using it as a waypoint between the Turkish border and Raqa, the extremists’ de facto capital.
SDF forces, backed by US-led coalition air power, have now retaken much of Manbij, though pockets of resistance remain in the city’s north.
“Although fighting in Manbij continues, IS is clearly on the ropes. It has lost the center of Manbij, it has lost control of Manbij,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Gordon Trowbridge said.
Trowbridge said US officials were aware of the reports but unable to confirm them.
IS “has consistently shown a willingness to put innocent lives at risk, in blatant violation not only of the laws of armed conflict but of common human decency,” he said.
Since fighting for Manbij began, US-led strikes have taken out more than 50 of IS’s heavy weapons and destroyed more than 600 fortified fighting positions, Trowbridge said.
But the job of clearing the city will be complicated after the jihadists left behind hundreds of mines and booby traps, he added.