ISIS militants seen fleeing Syrian town
CAIRO — U.S. military drones monitored Islamic State militants loading up hundreds of cars, buses and trucks with fighters and civilians and fleeing the city of Manbij, Syria, on Friday, as Syrian rebels advanced and the extremists lost yet another stronghold.
On Wednesday, the Libyan city of Sirte, held by the Islamic State group for more than a year, also fell to pro-government militiamen, and the militants lost the headquarters from which they had ruled more than 150 miles of Libyan coastline.
The two new victories against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, could have a significant effect on the group’s efforts to penetrate the West.
Manbij controlled one of just two crossings to Turkey from Syria, and its fall probably will deprive the extremists of that route. The other major crossing, al-Rai, is often under attack by anti-Islamic State factions. The route between Manbij and Jarabulus, Turkey, has been the route by which foreign jihadis have come to join the Islamic State in Syria, or to leave again for European destinations. It also is the largest city the group has lost in Syria. 20 U.S. airstrikes a day
Britain’s Channel 4 News broadcast images of jubilant residents burning their veils and cutting off their beards as the militants fled.
The battles in Syria and Libya had significant involvement from the United States. In Manbij, which had a prewar population of 100,000, many of the more than 300 U.S. Special Forces advisers in Syria monitored the battle from makeshift command posts several miles away, and the U.S. military launched more than 100 airstrikes in the city, sometimes as many as 20 a day.
In Sirte, in the first eight days of August, U.S. warplanes and armed Reaper drones carried out at least 28 strikes on Islamic State positions, which the Libyan militias said played a major role in their victory there.
Officials had worried about the Islamic State’s access to Sirte’s long coastline a short distance from Europe.
In Iraq, the country’s military took back Fallujah in June, the third time it had claimed to do so, but the first time the claim proved to be true. U.S. advisers were heavily involved in that operation, as well. And in July, the Iraqi military recaptured from the Islamic State the strategic Qayyarah Air Base, about 35 miles south of Mosul.
“The military side of this campaign is just coming together,” Brett McGurk, President Barack Obama’s envoy to the coalition against the Islamic State, said in a speech last month. “The Iraqi armed forces have not lost a battle in over a year.”
McGurk said the Iraqi military’s successes had made it more feasible for a campaign to liberate the northern city of Mosul. With a population of about 1 million, Mosul is the Islamic State’s biggest urban center. But retaking it, he said, would be difficult. Fighters are hiding out
While Islamic State fighters in Sirte have not been completely subdued, they have lost all of their major positions and are hiding out in three small neighborhoods.
“Daesh is not eradicated totally; there are some of them somewhere else in the country,” said Martin Kobler, the U.N. secretarygeneral’s envoy to Libya, using an Arabic acronym for the extremist group. “But they are not governing any longer.”
He added that the campaign’s success was a relief to Libyan authorities as well as to Europeans worried about the group’s proximity.
In Manbij, residents reached by telephone and Skype confirmed U.S. military reports that the extremists were on the run.
“The city is Daesh-free now,” said Adnan al-Hussein, an activist originally from the area.
Al-Hussein said residents had reported airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition against the fleeing fighters. The remaining Islamic State fighters appeared to be using civilians as human shields, said a senior U.S. military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.