Western-backed forces encircle key town in Syria
BEIRUT — Kurdish-led fighters completed their encirclement Friday of a key town held by the Islamic State group in northern Syria, part of a Westernbacked offensive that could see a major strategic victory over the militants.
The advance on Manbij, near the Turkish border, coincided with a Syrian army offensive supported by Russian airstrikes that brought troops closer to the city of Raqqa, the IS extremists’ de facto capital.
Two years after their blitz across the Euphrates River valley, the IS militants are coming under increasing pressure on territory they control in Syria and Iraq, as well as on a stronghold in chaotic Libya.
In another battleground of Syria’s civil war, minimal food deliveries finally reached the Damascus suburb of Daraya, which has been besieged and blockaded by government forces for nearly four years, but opposition activists said heavy bombardment held up the aid’s distribution.
The surrounding of Manbij by the Syria Democratic Forces followed the capture of dozens of nearby villages and farms near the Turkish border by the predominantly Kurdish group.
The coalition, backed by the U.S. and France, has been pressing an offensive since late May to try to capture the Islamic State stronghold, one of its largest in Aleppo province. Manbij is a waypoint on an IS supply line between Raqqa and the Turkish frontier.
The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said an IS commander from North Africa was killed in the latest round of fighting. More than 130 jihadists have been killed since May 31, when the SDF offensive began.
If the SDF captures Manbij, it will be the biggest strategic defeat for IS in Syria since July 2015, when it lost the border town of Tal Abyad, another major supply route for the militants.
The campaign coincided with a Syrian army offensive that brought troops to about 9 miles from the IS-held air base of Tabqa near Raqqa. Backed by intense Russian airstrikes, the Syrian troops seized a major intersection that leads to the air base and nearby oil fields, according to state media and the Observatory.
The latest push by SDF in the Manbij area has almost isolated IS positions in Aleppo province from the Turkish border.
In neighboring Iraq, government forces cleared more territory won back from the Islamic State group on the southern edge of Fallujah, held by the militants for more than two years.
Iraqi forces pushed deeper into the city about 40 miles west of Baghdad after a protracted fight this week, under cover of heavy airstrikes by a U.S.-led coalition.
As armored bulldozers and units in Humvees cleared houses in the Shuhada neighborhood, IS launched mortars and rockets at the troops. One such counterattack Thursday wounded a commander and three other men.
Humanitarian conditions for about 50,000 people trapped inside Fallujah are increasingly dire, according to the United Nations.