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| Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters gather near rising smoke on a street in Manbij, in Aleppo Governorate, Syria, August 7, 2016. REUTERS photo |
U.S.-backed forces battling Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) near the Turkish border in northern Syria said on Aug. 12 they had launched a final assault to flush the remaining jihadists out of the city of Manbij.
The Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), with air support from a U.S.-led coalition, said last week they had taken almost complete control of Manbij, where a small number of ISIL militants have been holed up.
Aug. 12’s attack is “the last operation and the last assault,” said Sharfan Darwish, a spokesman for the Syrian Arab and Kurdish forces.
Darwish said roughly 100 ISIL militants were left in the center of the city, and that they were using civilians as human shields. Several civilians were killed trying to flee, he said.
The SDF’s offensive, which began at the end of May, quickly captured the countryside surrounding Manbij, but slowed once fighting entered the city. The SDF said it had been avoiding a large-scale assault inside Manbij out of concern for civilians.
Dozens of people were killed in suspected U.S. coalition air strikes last month, residents and monitors said.
The campaign aims to flush ISIL out of areas it controls along the Turkish border, which was for years a route through which the group moved fighters and weapons.
Meanwhile, a series of airstrikes on Aug. 12 in opposition areas in Syria’s northern Aleppo province killed at least 18 people, including children and two hospital staffers, when the missiles hit an open market, a women and children’s hospital and a village, activists and rescue workers said.
Airstrikes hit the only hospital for women and children in the town of Kafr Hamra before dawn Aug. 12, killing two staffers including a nurse. The first-responders team of Syrian Civil Defense said it pulled 10 people alive from under the rubble.
Kafr Hamra is adjacent to the northern frontline in the deeply divided city of Aleppo, where government troops have sealed the main route into opposition areas, effectively trapping nearly 300,000 residents.
The opposition fighters launched a counteroffensive last week, breaching the siege from the southern front. That road remains under fire, and the U.N. has asked for a cease-fire to allow aid into the area.
Health facilities have been frequently targeted in the civil war in Syria. Aid groups have said the month of July was one of the worst since the war began in 2011, with some 43 facilities in opposition areas partially or totally destroyed.
Despite calls for cease-fire and a promise from Russia of a three-hour respite to allow in humanitarian aid, there has been no let up in the violence.
During the day on Aug. 12, airstrikes hit a market area in the southwestern Aleppo Province town of Urem al-Kubra, killing at least six people, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war in Syria. Urem al-Kubra lies on the road linking Aleppo to the northern rebel-controlled province of Idlib, which has also witnessed intense bombings.
In the northern Aleppo countryside, at least 10 people were killed, including children and women, when airstrikes hit the village of Hayan. It was not clear what the target was.
