British jihadists killed as Isil loses Syria’s ‘Little London’
Manbij residents celebrate end to two years under Isil after battle pitting Briton against Briton in Syria
BRITISH Isil fighters and other foreign jihadists are believed to have been killed after a Syrian city known as “Little London” fell to Western-backed rebels this weekend.
There were scenes of jubilation in the city of Manbij as the last Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) fighters were driven out, ending more than two years of jihadist rule.
Women emerged from beneath black burkas, while men were able to cut their beards for the first time since Isil took control in January 2014.
Manbij was believed to be home to around 100 British jihadists before Arab and Kurdish fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launched their assault on the city in May.
SDF troops said they expected many of the foreign jihadists had been killed by US airstrikes and during house-to-house fighting in the city. Isil fighters often burn their passports, making it difficult to identify their nationalities.
Manbij is 25 miles from the Turkish border and was a staging post for foreign fighters travelling through Syria.
“After the liberation of Manbij, Isil members won’t be able to freely travel to and from Europe any more,” said Salih Muslim, a Syrian Kurdish leader.
A British former currency trader from Oxfordshire fought alongside Kurdish troops as they battled against Isil to retake the city.
SDF forces have spent weeks fighting their way across the city aided by Western airpower and special forces.
The loss of Manbij is one of a string of recent setbacks Isil has suffered on the battlefield in Syria and in Iraq.
WOMEN ripped off their black burkas and defiantly smoked cigarettes, while the men cut their beards as they gave the peace sign.
After two years living under Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), the residents of the northern Syrian city of Manbij could not quite believe it when US-backed forces arrived to rescue them.
“Why did you take so long?” sobbed one woman, who had been trapped in her basement for a week along with her two daughters and elderly father after Isil threatened to kill anyone who tried to escape.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) declared the city fully liberated, saying they were “starting a new history after closing the book of darkness”.
The battle, which has displaced nearly 100,000 civilians and left more than 400 dead, proved to be the fiercest of all the offensives to dismantle the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate across Syria and Iraq. The operation to liberate the city, launched in late May supported by coalition air strikes and Western special forces, was significantly slowed by the jihadists’ use of civilians as human shields, forcing troops to clear the city house by house.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors Syria’s fiveyear conflict, said about 500 cars left Manbij on Friday using civilians as human shields, going north-east towards Jarablus, a town under Isil control.
Some 25 miles from the Turkish border, Manbij has been a hub for the smuggling of weapons and foreign recruits from Europe to Isil. It had such a large number of British fighters, it earned the nickname “Little London”.
And the battle to liberate Manbij did not just pit Syrian against Syrian, but Briton against Briton.
Among those on the front line with the SDF was Macer Gifford, a 29-yearold former currency trader from Oxfordshire. “I wanted to join the fight against Isil in Manbij in particular because of the connection it has with Britain,” said Mr Gifford, a public school-educated former Conservative councillor who had no previous military experience apart from a few days’ training with the Territorial Army.
“I wanted to confront those people who were brought up in the West and given every chance to succeed, but who instead chose to come to Syria to brutalise and terrorise the innocent people here,” he told The Sunday Telegraph. Mr Gifford, who uses a pseudonym to protect his family, joined a unit of 40 soldiers which included a number of other Westerners.
“It was like nothing I’ve experienced before,” said Mr Gifford, who has fought with the Kurdish army in other battles in northern Syria. “There was constant gunfire and shelling, and I mean 24/7, night and day. You couldn’t travel more than 10 yards without a sniper trying to take a shot at you.
“Unlike their other strongholds, in Manbij they did not run away. They’ve had years to prepare for this fight and they stockpiled massive amounts of weapons and rounds.”
Pictures from newly liberated Manbij showed a bleak landscape of flattened buildings and bombed-out roads with black Isil flags still fluttering from flagpoles.
“It was hell on earth,” said Mr Gifford. “It was unbearably hot at around 50C (122F), sometimes we didn’t get to sleep or eat for 24 hours, and there’s the constant smell of rotting bodies out on the street.”
He said Isil fighters wore civilian clothes, making it hard to distinguish them from non-combatants.
“We saw one man going into a house, where we were sure he was laying IEDs, but we weren’t 100 per cent. Unlike Isil, the SDF has rules of conduct, so I didn’t shoot,” he said.
“Particularly as a foreigner in someone else’s war, you don’t want to be responsible for accidentally killing a civilian.”
He saw the use of young children as spotters, as well as female snipers. It is very rare for Isil to deploy women in battle, and suggests they were struggling for manpower. According to local reports as many as 4,000 fighters were killed.
“They don’t care who they shoot, whether it’s children, women, the elderly,” Mr Gifford said. “There was one suicide bomber who blew himself up in the middle of a crowd of young families just to stop them leaving the city.”
Mr Gifford, who has now completed three tours with the Kurds, decides whether to tell his family he is heading out to Syria by weighing up his chance of death or serious injury. This time around he told them.
“In previous offensives, I worked out that the statistic was roughly one in 10 foreign fighters being killed or badly hurt,” he said. “This one is so fierce it is more like five or six in 10.”
After the death last week of 22-yearold Dean Carl Evans from Reading, who was shot by a sniper, Mr Gifford believes he is now the last Briton fighting Isil on the ground.
Mr Gifford said almost all the fighters they encountered were foreigners, who had been ruling over the city’s residents with a perverted interpretation of sharia.
“Much of the paperwork in their headquarters was in French – how women should dress, how fighters should treat their sex slaves,” he said.
“It was clear these Westerners had all left their comfortable lives and taken up residence in these opulent buildings, oppressing the people who lived there.”