A U.S.-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias seized full control of the strategic northern Syrian city of Manbij after a more than two-months’ long offensive against ISIS militants, a rights group reported Saturday.
The militias, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, are now combing the city, searching for remaining ISIS militants, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Hundreds of civilians and combatants have died in the fighting.
The town, under ISIS control for two years, is yet another major stronghold the terror group lost in recent months after it ceded parts of Sirte in Libya and Falluja in Iraq after other anti-ISIS military actions. The offensive to wrest Manbij from ISIS began May 31.
Around 25 miles from the Turkish border, Manbij is a strategic point for ISIS, and the terror group’s principal hub between Raqqa, the capital of its self-declared Islamic State caliphate, and Turkey.
It has been a key spot in a route for the ISIS smuggling of weapons and foreign fighters.
“Cut them off there and they’re totally isolated in Raqqa. So it’s critical, strategic, and we have now launched an operation long in planning to go after it,” an official told CNN at the beginning of the offensive.
Casualty breakdown
The observatory said 432 civilians, among them 104 children and 54 women, were killed since Manbij operations started. It said coalition airstrikes killed 203 of them and snipers, landmines and machine gun fire left 229 dead.
Clashes between the militias and ISIS left hundreds of combatants dead. That includes 269 militia forces — among them a commander and three European fighters — and 932 ISIS militants, the observatory said.
The “symbolic value” of Manbij
Global Risk Insights, a publication that covers and analyzes news events, published an essay in July explaining that “the operation’s ultimate goal is to close a strategic pocket for ISIS between the Turkish border and the city of Raqqa in central Syria.”
Raqqa province has “symbolic value,” the essay said, because “it was the first province the Syria regime lost in the opposition in early 2013 — embodying Damascus’ lack of control.” That’s a reference to President Bashar al-Assad’s government based in the Syrian capital of Damascus.
The north-central province “was highly coveted by ISIS, as it is the Syrian regime’s old bastion, and home to the Syrian air force, with important defensive capacities.”
The offensive forced ISIS to fight on different fronts, stretching ISIS’ resources, the essay said.