US-backed Syrian forces say next ISIL target is Al Bab

It comes two days after the extremists were driven out of Manbij – their worst defeat yet at the hands of the Syrian Democratic Forces alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters.

Troops from the Syrian Democratic Forces pose as a statement on the founding of a military council to push ISIL out of Al Bab is read out in Manbij on August 14, 2016. Rodi Said/Reuters

BEIRUT // US-backed Syrian forces said on Sunday they had established a military council to push ISIL fighters out of their northern bastion of Al Bab, two days after ousting the extremists from Manbij.

“We announce ... the creation of the Al Bab military council” tasked with driving ISIL from the town in Aleppo province, said the Syrian Democratic Forces alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters.

“We promise to our people that we will strike to liberate Al Bab” and the region around it.

The last remaining ISIL fighters abandoned the city of Manbij near the Turkish border on Friday after an offensive that the Pentagon said showed the extremists were “on the ropes”.

The extremists’ defeat at Manbij, which they captured in 2014, was their worst yet at the hands of the SDF alliance backed by US air power.

The group took some 2,000 civilians as they fled the city to serve as human shields. Hundreds were released on Saturday but the SDF said the fate of many remained unclear.

Al Bab is around 50 kilometres south-west of Manbij, and also in the battleground province of Aleppo.

Also on Sunday, a monitoring group said Syrian and Russian warplanes had killed dozens in areas held by a rebel alliance battling to take control of Aleppo city.

The air strikes, which began on Saturday and continued on Sunday, killed 45 civilians in and around Aleppo and 22 in neighbouring Idlib province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The raids came as the Islamist Faylaq Al Sham faction, part of the Jaish Al Fatah rebel alliance, said it had begun a new offensive “to liberate” the regime-held district of Zahra on Aleppo’s western outskirts.

The Britain-based Observatory and opposition fighters said a car bomb exploded in Zahra on Sunday, but did not mention casualties.

The monitor said the air strikes targeted areas held by Jaish Al Fatah, an alliance of forces, including extremist factions, that has mounted a major Aleppo offensive.

“The intensification of the strikes in Idlib is due to the fact that this province is the main source of fighters for the Army of Conquest (Jaish Al Fatah),” said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.

The strikes were especially intense around the southern district of Ramussa, which was seized by rebels earlier this month in a major setback for forces loyal to president Bashar Al Assad.

After a nearly three-week government siege of Ramussa, rebels took the district on August 6, linking up with opposition-held neighbourhoods

Nine other civilians were killed in rebel shelling of regime-held western Aleppo on Saturday, the Observatory said.

The increased fighting in Aleppo has raised concerns for the estimated 1.5 million civilians still in the city, including some 250,000 in rebel-held areas.

The United Nations has called for regular 48-hour pauses in the fighting to allow aid into the city, which has suffered from severe shortages of food, water and medical supplies.

Meanwhile, the Russian defence ministry said six long-range bombers from Russia had struck around Deir Ezzor city, an ISIL stronghold.

ISIL controls large parts of Deir Ezzor and most of the oil-rich eastern province of the same name – part of the swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq that it seized in mid-2014.

The ministry said the Russian Tupolev bombers carried out raids south-west, east and north-east of the city, wiping out two command posts, six arms depots, ISIL vehicles and “a large number of fighters”.

In a piece of rare good news on Sunday, a 10-year-old girl shot in the besieged town of Madaya was evacuated to a Damascus hospital where she was in a stable condition, the Observatory and a security source said.

Ghina Quwayder’s leg was shattered when she was shot by a government sniper at a checkpoint in the southwestern town earlier this month while buying medicine for her mother, Amnesty International said.

* Agence France-Presse