BEIRUT — U.S.-backed fighters in Syria on Thursday closed off all major roads leading to the northern Syrian town of Manbij, a stronghold of the Islamic State group, and surrounded it from three sides, officials and opposition activists said.
The town is one of the largest IS-held urban areas in northern Aleppo province. It’s also a waypoint on an IS supply line between the Turkish border and the extremists’ de facto capital, Raqqa. If the U.S.-backed Syria Democratic Forces capture Manbij, it will be the extremists’ biggest defeat in Syria since government forces took the central historic town of Palmyra in March.
The U.S. Central Command said the Manbij operation is part of the “moderate Syrian opposition” efforts to clear areas along the border with Turkey from IS. Members of the American and French military have been advising forces fighting IS in northern Syria.
A statement by the Military Council of the City of Manbij, which is part of the SDF, said that all roads from the east, north and south have been cut. The group said they are now close enough to target IS inside the town, but they are holding off storming Manbij to avoid civilian casualties.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said SDF fighters are about 800 meters (yards) from the last main road linking Manbij with the city of Aleppo. Since the SDF offensive began on May 31, Observatory says 132 IS militants, 21 SDF fighters and 37 civilians have been killed there.
Mustafa Bali, a Syrian journalist who visited the front lines in Manbij on Thursday, told The Associated Press that the extremists don’t appear to be preparing to withdraw from Manbij as the had from other areas. He added that on Wednesday, black clouds covered the city as IS set tires alight to apparently obscure visibility inside Manbij and prevent airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition planes flying overhead.
“Daesh is preparing for a battle inside the city,” Bali said, using an Arabic acronym to refer to IS. SDF official Nasser Haj Mansour said on Wednesday that some 15,000 civilians had fled Manbij.
In its statement, the U.S. Central Command also said that the U.S.-led coalition has conducted more than 105 strikes in support of the battle to liberate Manbij. It added that the “Syrian Arab Coalition is leading the operation and will be responsible for securing Manbij once it is freed” — an apparent attempt to calm the town’s Arab residents who fear Kurdish fighters, who are predominant in the SDF, will also enter their town.
The statement said coalition advisers are assisting the fighters in the battles “with command and control from nodes located behind the forward line of friendly forces.”
In France, an official confirmed that French special forces are offering training and giving advice to SDF fighters. The official with the French Defense Ministry, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record, said its forces are with SDF fighters who are fighting against IS. The. He didn’t provide other details.
In a round-table interview last week, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said French forces were participating. “We are helping with arms, we are helping with aerial support, we are helping with advice.”
The U.S. also has around 300 Special Forces embedded with the SDF in northern Syria.
The U.S. military also said a second carrier group is nearing the Mediterranean Sea to bolster operations, the first time two American carriers will be in those waters at the same time since the 2003 Iraq invasion.
U.S. European Command spokesman Lt. Col. David Westover said the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its strike group of guided missile cruisers and destroyers was now in EUCOM’s area of responsibility in the Atlantic en route to the Mediterranean.
It joins the USS Harry S. Truman carrier strike group already in the Mediterranean.
U.S. 6th Fleet spokesman Lt. Shawn Eklund says U.S. warships are there to carry out anti-Islamic State actions and to reassure European allies.
“When we put carriers in place, it sends a signal,” he said.
Also Thursday, the U.N. envoy for Syria said the Syrian government had granted approval for humanitarian aid to be delivered to 19 U.N.-designated “besieged areas” by the end of the month. Staffan de Mistura cautioned that having these approvals granted would not automatically translate into actual aid deliveries. In the past, aid convoys have been stopped last minute or had some cargo taken off.
De Mistura also said he has information that Damascus will release “substantial number of fighters,” in the thousands. The release of detainees has been a key demand by the opposition during rounds of indirect peace talks held in Geneva earlier this year.
The U.N. envoy didn’t give a date for the next round of talks, saying that “time is not yet mature” but that the negotiators “want to do it as soon as possible.”
Speaking about the Damascus suburb of Daraya where medical aid was allowed for the first time earlier this month since 2012, de Mistura said when the U.N. was waiting for approval of aid delivery, the place was “heavily shelled and in particular the mosque in the month of Ramadan.”contributed to this report.
